So, as I've previously mentioned, I'd been considering doing a Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 playthrough, with the twist of user feedback driving the main in-game decisions.

For those of you who don't know, DAO is a game published in 2009 by Bioware. It was billed as a "spritual successor" to the extremely popular and critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate series, which made Bioware's name as the creator of stories with multiple, branching endings and convincing, engaging characters.

Bioware chafed a little under the IP restrictions which the owners of Dungeons&Dragons put them under for that series, and so sought to develop their own intellectual property which they could then take in the direction they wanted. After 5 years(!) in development, Dragon Age: Origins was the result.

I won't give too much of the story away, but suffice to say, whicever Origin is chosen, the main character gets drafted into the Grey Wardens, a Templar-esque transnational order of warriors, whose main purpose is to defend against the Blight - periodic invasions by creatures called darkspawn - by any means necessary. And then things get all complicated. There's more than a hint of influence from certain modern fantasy stories too, such as George RR Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and (more in the second game) Steven Erikson's Malazan setting.

Just so you are aware, the choice of Origin does have an in-game impact, and can change the possible choices of how the game ends. The event which causes your drafting will have repurcussions later on in the game, though even if you chose another origin, some of those events will still have happened (the elves in Denerim riot regardless, a power struggle breaks out in Orzammar, Arl Howe kills the Couslands). It can, however, make certain confrontations and story lines have a bit more resonance.

And if you ask me personally, I like either the Human Noble or City Elf (Female) storylines the best, for that resonance.

Gender primarily influences who you can romance in the game. There are always two hetrosexual and one homosexual romance option for each gender. It can also have an influence on the ending, depending on in-game choices and origin story.

There are three classes in the game: Warrior, Rogue and Mage. As per usual, warriors are the heavy hitters and the tanks, who can wear the heaviest armour and use the heaviest weapons, deal out and take the most damage. Rogues are the agile burst DPS specialists - if you really need that one character dead, right now, they're your best friend. Mages are the distance based, crowd control specialists. Blowing things up, setting things on fire, boiling people's blood while its still inside them...you know the drill. They can also heal, however, in a slight departure from standard RPG fare. Don't go crying to a priest if you cut yourself, unless you just want a sermon.

Each class has 4 specializations, which give certain stat bonuses and open up a new talent tree. Rogues get Assassins, Duellists, Rangers and Bards, Warriors get Templars, Champions, Reavers and Beserkers and Mages get Arcane Warrior, Spirit Healer, Shapechanger and Blood Mage. Since they fall under character build and, in some cases, require specialised builds to properly utilise, they will be down to my discretion, though again popular demand may influence me in certain ways.

I've showcased each different type of fighting style in each playthrough. As I intend to keep control of the build for whatever character you select, that doesn't really matter much, but I may take into consideration preferences on the subject. So for warriors, there is sword and shield style, which primarily helps defend the character, there is two-handed weapons which is primarily offensive in nature, there is two-weapons style and archery as well.

Two-weapons and archery are mostly intended for rogues, though they can work on the warrior as well. Two weapons is, of course, up close dual-wielding, and archery involves hanging back and using precision strikes to take down the enemy. And mages are entirely different.

You may also be wondering why my characters are starting off with some high level, powerful gear. These are the result of completing certain achievements for DLC in the game. For instance, the Battledress of the Provocateur involves finding the six scraps of leather in Leliana's Song, and the Dragonbone Cleaver is obtained by defeating the Varterral on Hard difficulty in Witch Hunt. They are extremely powerful...but they come with restrictions like all the game items, and since they are high-tier, some of those restrictions mean it can take quite a bit of levelling up before those items are available for the classes they are intended.

In terms of DLC I intend to play...I only think Awakening, Witch Hunt and Leliana's Song have any story impact or are of enough quality to do, besides those which are integrated into the game itself. Golems of Amgarrak is a slogfest, and after the last time, I refuse to do it on Nightmare again, which I know you sadists would otherwise make me do. Though it is delightfully creepy, I wont deny. But no-one wants to sit through 500 reloads of "Cain trying to defeat the Reaper and getting frustrated at everything."

Each playthrough was done on Hard difficulty, which the developers consider the "baseline" difficulty for the intended DAO experience (why is this not the Normal setting? People whining, most likely).

I have modded the game...slightly. All my mods fall into three basic categories: bugfixes, graphics and lore.

Bugfixes are simple. When the game shipped, a lot of things didn't work properly. Spells didn't draw threat, archery and two-handed weapon talents didn't work as described or intended, DoT damage for certain talents didn't work...all a mess. A lot of this was patched, but Bioware have limited resources and cannot do everything. Some rewards were also not given.

Graphics are also simple. The game came out 4 years ago. I think the graphics are fairly decent, but they weren't top-notch even back then, and so have suffered in the interim. Some HD textures, tint changes and minor facelifts bring a new clarity to the game.

Lore may be a bit more debateable. One mod replaces the Cousland armory, to give weapons and armor a bit more suited to one of the most ancient noble houses of Ferelden. Steel tier armor, to be exact, with a Silverite blade. The blade has the normal strength restrictions, meaning it wont be used until mid-game at least, but it does come with a minor enchantment and two rune slots. The armor is normal steel armor, but restricted to the main character alone. It also adds a little bit more gold and some jewels to the Cousland treasury.

Another improves Warden's Oath, the necklace you are given when joining the Wardens. It makes it a bit more competitive for end-of-game play, and with an enchantment that makes sense.

A third installs stamina potions, which are included in the expansion pack, but were apparently an oversight for the main game.

Finally, a mod is installed which means skill and talent points are not automatically assigned to the character on creation, allowing a bit more freedom when starting out.

So no godlike weapons, invincibility or nudity mods. Sorry to disappoint.

To start with, we'll have three polls. One poll for origin, race and gender, and one for class. Please note, dwarves do not get to be mages, so don't vote for the dwarf origins, then that. The mage origin is the same regardless of race.

I missed the first half of the Human Noble origin because fraps crashed, but the story is essentially: you are the second child of the noble Cousland family. Your father and brother intend to ride south and join the King at Ostagar, where Ferelden forces are planning to confront the darkspawn. Arl Howe, an old friend of your father, intends to ride south with your father and brother, but his forces have been delayed. And Duncan, a Grey Warden, is at your castle to see Ser Gilmore, in regards to recruiting him to the Wardens. During the night, Arl Howe's men launch a surprise attack on the keep, which is where the action starts.

You may also like to know that Arl Howe is voiced by Tim Curry, who is a great choice. In fact, great voice acting abounds in this game, with some very well known people voicing certain parts.

And just one more question...when commentating, do you want me to read out the character's answer before selecting it? No voice actor voices the main character in this game, as you'll notice. And while on the topic, do you want the Codex entries reading out? Some of the lore is quite interesting, and certain adds to the feeling of the game, but there is a fair bit of it as well. It's up to you guys.

Once an origin is decided, I'll put up another poll with choices relating to that origin.

I think I've beaten this game like 3 or 4 times! One of bioware's better games IMO. Not as good as Mass Effect, but I LOVED the combat. And it's nice to see RPGs that involve actual role playing. And choices that matter.

Clearly you want to play a Male City Elf Warrior who has crazy kinky buttsex with Zevran.

I would have suggested playing a rogue, but if Zevran is going to be in your party, you don't really need one. And rogues in DA1 kind of suck-- you have to waste so many points on lock picking that you'll suck at weapons until the middle of the game. Or you can just miss out on a shitload treasure. WHICH IS NOT AN OPTION

My most fun playthrough was trying to rock an all-mage party. (plus leliana, because mages can't open locks and I'd rather spend a weekend playing Superman 64 than miss a treasure chest) The mages can basically fill all the necessary party roles except rogue. If you have your main character learn Arcane Warrior, you can begin the battle by dumping all your mana into combat spells and buffs and then draw your sword and play like a warrior.

I've never played through the game with a pro-templar anti-magic stance, so I'd be curious to hear how that line plays out.

IMO a rogue can still be pretty viable. Most of the treasure in locked chests is just junk anyway, there is nothing which is quest critical. Besides, a for a rogue archer, there are several talents which are melee only, and so useless. I mean, combat movement, and the one which means you do critical strikes against paralyzed targets? Both worthless, as they only work with melee weapons.

So you have talents to spare anyway. And the Warden will always be a better rogue than Zevran or Leliana.

That said, a three-mage Leliana party would be pretty powerful, and a pro-Templar character would be interesting. Especially if they themselves were a blood mage or similar.

I kind of like the Dalish. The polling thing is indeed blocked for me, so there's my vote.

20 minutes an episode, huh? Now I see why these games are so popular. You really need to commit.

Oh yes. Well, to be honest, the 20 minute per episode thing is more of a hard space limitation for me, plus a boredom limitation for everyone else. Fraps records really, REALLY large files for some reason. I render them down in Windows Movie Maker, but 20 minutes is still roughly 700mb to 1 gig, in 720p (and double that in 1080p).

And the time commitment is very high. I checked my last playthrough...48 hours for the main game. And I missed a couple of sidequests off that. Awakening takes about 12 hours to do, 20 if you really string it out, and Witch Hunt and Leliana's Song can both be done in about an hour, if not less.

Always meant to pick this up but never found the time. Voting for whatever gives the best plot. If you've been through it a few times already I don't see any need to inflict high difficulties either. Lower would probably be funnier for bad AI and overall faster completion?

In theory, but the fighting doesn't take up a huge amount of time. Besides, boring AI is boring, and so not a challenge at all. At least on Hard and Nightmare the game will occasionally surprise you, by throwing in a Scattershot or Crushing Prison when you least expect it.

If it's just boring AI, then go hard. I was thinking about some of the other AI issues other bioware titles had and assumed they carried over to this. Any good mods for this similar to the BG2 difficulty ones? Perhaps one of those could be the answer.

A couple, allegedly, but I've never had the chance to try them. Enemies do seem more likely to "chain" their abilities on Nightmare, though I'm not sure if that's by design or just chance.

Then I vote for one of them, if you'd consider it.

Well, I'd rather not mod it extensively, so if others wanted to use it for their own playthroughs they wouldnt have unrealistic expectations. Plus, untested mods and all that. Mind if I count it as a vote for Nightmare?

A couple, allegedly, but I've never had the chance to try them. Enemies do seem more likely to "chain" their abilities on Nightmare, though I'm not sure if that's by design or just chance.

Then I vote for one of them, if you'd consider it.

Well, I'd rather not mod it extensively, so if others wanted to use it for their own playthroughs they wouldnt have unrealistic expectations. Plus, untested mods and all that. Mind if I count it as a vote for Nightmare?

Not at all.

Also:

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And just one more question...when commentating, do you want me to read out the character's answer before selecting it? No voice actor voices the main character in this game, as you'll notice. And while on the topic, do you want the Codex entries reading out? Some of the lore is quite interesting, and certain adds to the feeling of the game, but there is a fair bit of it as well. It's up to you guys.

Voice commentary would be good for key plot/lore/background stuff, Selected bits would be nice as I'm guessing there's a LOT of this.

Just to switch things up a bit I voted Female Elf Mage. I don't *think* I've completed a full playthrough as a mage yet. I remember starting and getting through a decent amount, but likely got distracted when I got DA2 or Fallout or something.

I just started again as a human noble, which I realized I had done before once the opening story began, but now I'm already committed and I'm not quite sure if I finished that line before either (maybe).

I have a hard time not picking rogue. Partially because as you mentioned, the ones that can join your party never seem to compare to the main character. I should switch it up a bit more, though.

Female elf mage is potentially amusing. Not least because of the crush Cullen has on a female mage Warden, and there is no way that any mage I play will not be a) a Blood Mage, and b) an Arcane Warrior.

At the very least, it suggests Cullen ran away to Kirkwall because his crush is the thing he is most paranoid about, could probably beat him up without magic, and slaughtered thousands using some combination of sword to heart/boiling their blood in their veins in the course of the first game.

Which is almost understandable, really. Also the mage warden does allow for the most versatile teams, possibly followed by the rogue archer warden.

Basically, Templars are the jailkeepers and executioners for mages. All mages are feared because they can potentially be possessed by demons (turning them into powerful abominations, which slaughter indiscriminately), or alternatively they can use blood magic, which allows them to control someone's mind, but also has neat tricks like causing people to haemorrhage uncontrollably. In particular, the religion of the setting has strong prohibitions against the use of blood magic because the enemies of the religion's founder used it, and because, according to said religion, darkspawn and the Blight are an indirect result of blood magic. Oh, and it's mostly learnt from demons, since knowledge of blood magic is banned everywhere outside the Tevinter Imperium, which means a blood mage is starting down the long, miserable road to becoming an abomination in most cases.

So, mages are controlled by an organization called the Circle, which is in turn controlled by the Templars, who are the militant arm of the Chantry. They hunt blood mages and those mages who operate outside the Circle, and have the authority to kill mages inside the Circle they suspect of corruption, whether of the "talking to demons" or "blood magic" type.

Cullen, one of the Templars, has a crush on the female mage warden.

In-game events allow the warden to become a blood mage, if one wishes. Wardens are allowed to use any method to stop the blight, including blood magic, and operate outside of the control of the Circle, so for a lot of Templars, they are practically apostates.

A...particular series of in-game events cause Cullen to have considerable mistrust of blood mages, and not unfairly. He kinda has a mental breakdown at the end, if you don't side with him, and he's sent off to listen to whale music or whatever by his superiors until he calms down. He's then reassigned to the most paranoid Templar command for the events of the second game, which has a lot more to do with the tension between mages and templars, and he plays a suitably larger role.

At this point, there is no clear winner on the class/origin poll, so if you wanted to change it, this would be the choice.

My playthrough was a female elf mage with arcane warrior/blood mage traits. It's so ridiculously OP that I solo'd the boss of Golems of Amgarrak. I wasn't on Nightmare, of course, but as I am not a particularly skilled tactician (subscribing to the "fuck it" school of combat) it was still a holy shit moment.

You'll have fun with it. And yeah, Cullen's reaction is almost painful. I haven't played the second one, though, so now I'm curious to see his role.

Oh yeah, BM/AW is the soloing character of choice, which says a lot about its power output. Some people suggest Spirit Healer instead of Blood Mage for Nightmare, but such people are just afraid of getting their hands a little dirty.

That said, a Spirit Warrior/Archer is also insanely powerful. 900+ damage on standard criticals, over 2500 when using Arrow of Slaying. Not as much fun though, since you're not up in people's faces, since most of them don't have faces when moving within 50 feet of the Warden.

Obviously, there will actually be a number next to each #, for the episode in question.

I've decided I will do Golems of Amgarrak, but on Normal difficulty. I've already achieved "Grim Reaper (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Reaper%27s_Cudgel_%28Origins%29)", I've got nothing to prove. Besides, the story is kinda cool.

I've sent off to EA to request permission for monetization. Surprisingly, despite their reputation, EA are apparently mostly cool with monetization. However, they like to grant it on a "case by case" basis so they still have a legal recourse if monetization is abused in some way.

Thanks. In the meantime, I may do some of the rebooted Tomb Raider game videos or something. Square Enix give permission for monetization of all their games not made in Japan...and it's honestly not a bad game. Much better than the previous ones, anyway. The rebooted version of Thief will be out soon as well, and I think that's one of their productions. Or Skyrim...Bethesda never give permission anyway, but more testing is required first.

Also worth noting: Project Eternity (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,33395.0.html) or, as it has now been revealed as, Pillars of Eternity is chugging along quite nicely. The game's now up to Alpha quality, which still means it probably wont be released until near the end of the year...but as a backer, with permission from Obsidian, I might do a playthrough. Maybe even a Path of the Damned/Expert blind playthrough. Not Trial of Iron though, I'm not crazy.

Obviously, there will actually be a number next to each #, for the episode in question.

I've decided I will do Golems of Amgarrak, but on Normal difficulty. I've already achieved "Grim Reaper (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Reaper%27s_Cudgel_%28Origins%29)", I've got nothing to prove. Besides, the story is kinda cool.

I've sent off to EA to request permission for monetization. Surprisingly, despite their reputation, EA are apparently mostly cool with monetization. However, they like to grant it on a "case by case" basis so they still have a legal recourse if monetization is abused in some way.

So now it's a waiting game.

Sweet. Looking forward to it. Haven't played Golems yet. Have been debating which DLC I wanted to spend my money on first. Except that I did get Warden's Keep, originally thinking it was something else. And it was ok, just short.

That is pretty cool that EA is generally good about monetization, too. Good luck!

Thanks, I actually recorded the first episode today. It's now in post-production, which is my fancy term for "rendering it down to HD definition".

Couldn't say when it will be uploaded though. My plan is to generally play through to the decision points, in half hour increments, then upload them one at a time, so people are not overloaded with videos.

And yeah, Warden's Keep seems mostly designed to correct the overight of having no storage at a supposed campsite. Being a fully subscribed member of the PC Mustard Race, I already have a solution for that - modders.

Thank you. I won't be recording any more for at least a day anyway, to give everyone time to vote. Also because I have some writing to do. And recording some more Dishonored, as I'm doing that playthrough without any viewer input, and so can progress further and then release the recordings on a steady schedule.

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a little better with the actual characters you recruit, since it tends to reflect their personality more. But given Jowan's personality is "whine" and Lily's is "dupe"...well, yeah.

When they're repeated over and over again they get old, but it's made up for in other areas. Some of the best dialogue in the game randomly pops up between your party members while you're just walking around. There's something for every combination of characters, so unless you keep switching them around or play the game many times over, you won't actually see them all in game.

After my play through I definitely looked up some of those lines and laughed my ass off.

Sten's approval tree is really interesting. While most of the others are pretty simple to figure out, his actually has something of a learning curve to it, and showing disapproval/calling him out can actually be the right move. It makes more sense once you understand Qunari culture, but it definitely puts him above, say, Alistair or Morrigan for complexity. It's a shame that two handed warriors are basically unnecessary, because otherwise he'd be my top choice for Permament Squad Member.

By the way, I have noticed the problem with the sound. I'm trying to find the right level for it now...the problem is, combat puts the music level right up, but the game doesn't seem to have a "combat sound" music control, only an overall music control.

On the plus side, turning the music right down would prevent more copyright notices from Inon Zur (who composed the soundtrack to the game, but only licenced EA to use his work thus making it 3rd party property and not subject to fair use) because you wouldn't be able to hear it very well.

Also, part 5 should be up shortly. Today there is a little more action, as we're off scouting in the Wilds.

That's what happens when I get a snow day out of work - 3 more parts come up. Thanks a lot, Obama :argh!:

Kidding though, as I have been looking forward to them. Let the watching commence!

As for the whiners - I'm sure I mentioned it before, but that's one of the reasons I like the dog so much. Good fighter and doesn't whine ever. I did try to switch it up a bit in my last game by not using him ALL the time, though.

Feel like last time I played DA2, everyone was whining ALL THE TIME, except Varric. Perhaps I just need to put together a better group of non-whiners.

Got three more parts. One is uploading today, not sure about the other two. If I make good progress on my essay this weekend, I'll do some recording on Monday and throw the two remaining parts up on Tuesday.

Just finished up this part (yea, I'm slacking, been a busy week). Heh, I was wondering where the murder part came in so early in the game. In my last play through, like an asshole I forgot to ask him about the key before getting him the food so no access to the chest. I probably could've/should've killed him instead, but oh well.

Also, it did not occur to me to return at a later time for higher-level items. Granted, I only recently got access to the internet, and thus, downloadable content, at home so it was a nonissue before anyway. Good to know, though.

Yeah, you won't be surprised to discover that Morrigan is a potential romance interest for a male character.

Also, in regard to the voices, it could be worse. One of the male human voicesets loops around to saying "Can I get you a ladder so you'll get off my back?" EVERY SINGLE TIME you click on him. People have abandoned entire playthroughs due to that.

In regards to the later loot, most of it isn't that special, it's mostly stuff taken from the levelled items list...however, there is one staff you get which has something like a 5% chance to stun an enemy. It's not end-game tier...but it'll do until you pick up something that is.

Also, in regard to the voices, it could be worse. One of the male human voicesets loops around to saying "Can I get you a ladder so you'll get off my back?" EVERY SINGLE TIME you click on him. People have abandoned entire playthroughs due to that.

Oh god, the female character I just played would not shut up with that. *Maybe* it wasn't every time, but it was a good 90-95% of her statements. It barely even makes any sense. I get it, but it's just so stupid, especially after thousandth time.

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In regards to the later loot, most of it isn't that special, it's mostly stuff taken from the leveled items list...however, there is one staff you get which has something like a 5% chance to stun an enemy. It's not end-game tier...but it'll do until you pick up something that is.

Ahh ok, cool. Good to know, anyway. Sounds like it would likely do me more good getting it early on in the game then, when I need anything I can my hands on.

I think it is designed for higher level characters though. Like, level 15 or so? Also, there is some equipment there which is very good, but the tier of the material is based on your level when you start, so it can be better to start it later. On my playthrough I'll be looking to do it at around level 16, before the Deep Roads.

I think it is designed for higher level characters though. Like, level 15 or so? Also, there is some equipment there which is very good, but the tier of the material is based on your level when you start, so it can be better to start it later. On my playthrough I'll be looking to do it at around level 16, before the Deep Roads.

Oh ok, that's definitely good to know. Playing Fallout: New Vegas again, but next time I play DA, I'll remember that.

Also part 7 is up. You can finally see why the Joining is so super secret

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtvMmYtwwjU&feature=youtu.be

Watching now. Was away this past weekend, including off Monday, busy for two days and a snow day yesterday, so hadn't been online much and was worried I'd missed a lot. Don't wanna fall too far behind.

Loghain's a bastard, tis true. The series owes a level of debt to A Song of Fire and Ice, so it's not very surprising.

It makes more sense when you understand the background. Loghain masterminded the defeat of the Orlesian Empire, driving them out of Ferelden 30 years previously and restoring the monarchy. The King's own son, Cailan, idiot that he is (though with great hair), then turns around and tries to allow Orlesian troops back into Ferelden, in order to combat the Blight. You may recall talk of Orlesian Grey Wardens being not far away.

Loghain, paranoid that he is, believes the Grey Wardens will be the tip of the spear. The Wardens are meant to be above politics, but Orlais is the largest and most powerful kingdom on the Continent and Wardens have meddled in Ferelden politics before, which is why they were initially expelled. And there is a game they play in Orlais, for honour and prestige. Cunning plots and treachery are hallmarks of how it is played.

Loghain was looking in the wrong places, but I don't think he was entirely wrong. The second game has rumblings of trouble between Ferelden and Orlais, and a significant portion of the third game is meant to be set in both countries.

What's going on with the Darkspawn, anyway? I suspect there's far more to them than there appears, since they apparently know how to make crossbows and siege weapons. They're clearly intelligent, so why haven't they ever opened negotiations, or at least made demands? There's got to be some motivation behind their attacks.

Nope, darkspawn are confirmed as non-sentient, though there is something of a gray-line in regards to Emissaries and Vanguards. The only reason they appear to be coordinating, having tactics etc is because this is a Blight, and the Archdemon imposes a kind of unity on them, directing them around. Without that, they'd break up into small raiding parties, and mostly go back down underground.

As for the weapons...the darkspawn crushed the Dwarven Empire, and took over most of the Deep Roads. The Roads are littered with weapons. Sometimes, when someone gets infected by the taint, especially during the Blight, they'll go over to the darkspawn and work as a weaponsmith for them. The taint means they are accepted, and also allows the Archdemon to influence their actions before completely dying.

That said...well, just wait for the expansion pack, Awakening. More darkspawn lore will be made known during that.

Ah. My suspicion was that they were the descendants of the original Tevinter mages, and that they had some kind of splinter culture derived from that one, but twisted and focused singlemindedly on the goal of reclaiming their old homeland. I suppose this leaves open the other possibility I had in mind, that they're some kind of metaphysical immune response to the intrusion on the Golden/Black City. Something like a cosmic allergy, I guess.

Perhaps. One character suggests very strongly that the Taint is entirely alien to the Fade and demons dont know how to counter it, which suggests another origin for the darkspawn. The dwarves are currently my top culprit, as they have a history of using hideous weapons of war and the darkspawn first came from, and attacked, in the Deep Roads. And then...well, I can't give away too much, but there is something in DA2 which strongly suggests the Chantry version is, at least, partly correct.

I still have and use the CD-ROMs, because I'm old school like that. Also not willing to pay twice for a game I already own.

Also, I'm falling behind on these, but that's because I had the Writing Week From Hell, Plus Job Stuff, Plus More Writing. I should be able to do a fair amount of recordings tomorrow, for this and Dishonored.

I still have and use the CD-ROMs, because I'm old school like that. Also not willing to pay twice for a game I already own.

I hear you on that. Though I'm debating picking up the ultimate edition, depending on the price, as I would like to play the DLC, but I have a feeling if I bought them all (or even just the ones I care to play) it may add up to more than the ultimate edition is selling for. Though I still feel kinda silly buying it again (well, it was a gift, but still)

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Also, I'm falling behind on these, but that's because I had the Writing Week From Hell, Plus Job Stuff, Plus More Writing. I should be able to do a fair amount of recordings tomorrow, for this and Dishonored.

Not for long. As soon as I hit level 7, I'll be taking the Arcane Warrior specialization and throwing on some decent armor. And then she'll get the Vestments of the Seer, as a kind of magical hand-me-down.

Poll is linked in the video, but can also be found here http://www.poll-maker.com/poll70853x34d11B82-3

Again, not a major game choice, but it's one to sort of, well, give me guidance in the choices I'm making so far. I'll be doing The Stone Prisoner DLC once I'm done with Lothering though, so we'll have one at the end of that. I'll be leaving this poll open probably until the end of the week, as I've got some Dishonored to upload as well.

Well, remember, I am going to be playing a blood mage (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_magic#In_present-day_Thedas). That doesn't necessitate evil acts, but it does make them rather more expected. At the very least, blood magic involves a pact with a demon and a casual attitude towards ripping the Veil open.

I can only assume this is a problem on my end, but going to have to finish the video later/tomorrow. After the 8:00 mark, it keeps a) freezing completely b) commentary continues while picture freezes. Loading the video in very small chunks. Not sure why since haven't had a problem any other time, but I'll try again in a bit

I'm sorry to hear that. Youtube can be funny at the best of times, though. I can only suggest using another browser or logging out of your account and refreshing the video....that normally does the trick.

I'm going with Alistair. The merchant's full of shit, and the way you've played Neria so far, I think that'd piss her off more than the price gouging. This protagonist seems to like brutal honesty, and half-assed justifications like the ones the merchant's spewing won't fly.

Also a fair conclusion. Brutal honesty is definitely a good way to piss people off.

We definitely wont need his money, between the Reaper's Cudgel and Potent Lyrium Potions (potions which, when sold, have a significant markup on the ingredients needed to make them), sovereigns are not an issue. Once you have about 600, you're pretty much set, as there are only a couple of items in the 80-120 sovereign range which are necessary, and you can mostly craft or loot the rest of your supplies.

Also, Lothering is scheduled to meet a darkspawn horde at a future point, so we don't even get preferential treatment for the rest of the game. A dwarf noble will, but that's because Gorim, after his exile, moves to Denerim and becomes a merchant, and the dwarf noble will always gets the best prices. If you really want to make money, that is the origin to choose.

I'm going with Alistair. The merchant's full of shit, and the way you've played Neria so far, I think that'd piss her off more than the price gouging. This protagonist seems to like brutal honesty, and half-assed justifications like the ones the merchant's spewing won't fly.

Soooo every time I try to click ANY of your videos, it is giving me a "web-page cannot be displayed" "Most likely cause:•Some content or files on this webpage require a program that you don't have installed"

Well, it's a new day and hadn't tried clicking the videos yet, but cleared the cache then did it and the video worked again, so maybe that was in.

Was able to finish watching through firefox yesterday, and as mentioned (and voted), in the spirit of the blood mage and the fact that I usually dance a fairly neutral line when playing normally, let's go the selfish route in this case.

Whenever Dark Souls II (https://www.google.co.uk/#q=dark+souls+difficulty) gets released, I intend to do a blind playthrough. And I expect that to be my reaction, every 10 minutes, without fail.

I'm doing fairly well for DAO at the moment. The real test will be the next few episodes. I swear, the bandits outside Lothering are more difficult than demons, professional assassins, elite guards and darkspawn. Give those bandits some good equipment and maybe put Ser Cauthrien in charge, and they could conquer half the damn country.

Unfortunately, I've been experimenting with Skyrim mods, looking for other paying writing gigs and doing background research this week, which means I have been lax on recording. I'm going to do a marathon session tomorrow, but it may not get uploaded until Saturday at the earliest, and Wednesday at the latest (night shifts Friday and Sunday, followed by tutorials Monday and Tuesday mean my sleep patterns are going to be extremely out of whack for the upcoming week).

However, I'm hoping to get to, at the very least, the end of the Stone Prisoner DLC, which will allow us to recruit Ferelden's foremost hater of pigeons and give us another game choice.

Unfortunately, I've been experimenting with Skyrim mods, looking for other paying writing gigs and doing background research this week, which means I have been lax on recording. I'm going to do a marathon session tomorrow, but it may not get uploaded until Saturday at the earliest, and Wednesday at the latest (night shifts Friday and Sunday, followed by tutorials Monday and Tuesday mean my sleep patterns are going to be extremely out of whack for the upcoming week).

However, I'm hoping to get to, at the very least, the end of the Stone Prisoner DLC, which will allow us to recruit Ferelden's foremost hater of pigeons and give us another game choice.

What kind of mods do you use for Skyrim? I mainly stick with gameplay and immersion mods, like SkyRe and Lively Inns and Taverns. I find Skyrim's the kind of game that can be fun with copious modding, but as a vanilla game Bethesda kinda dropped the ball.

Oh god, I've experimented with tons. It depends on the kind of game I'm looking to play. I really need, like, 7 different Skyrim installations for the different ways I enjoy playing it.

If you want a hardcore survival game, I would go with Frostfall/Hypothermia, Hunterborn, Realistic Needs and Diseases, Camping Kit of the Northern Ranger and Alternate Start. Pick "left for dead" and see how long you can survive for. This makes for a much slower, but more dangerous gameplay, where the environment, disease and starvation are your primary foes.

Combat is probably where I've experimented most. I would definitely recommend Duel (version 7) and the ACE Realistic Fighting Module. Duel makes stamina much more important, like SkyRe, and makes staggers much more likely and ACE adds bonuses and penalties based on your armor choices, readiness (weapon drawn or not), stance (crouching combat is bad), attack angle and whether you're staggered or not. Duel also enhances enemy AI. Combined, they make melee combat much more fraught...and if you try and rely on ranged combat, the enemy will come looking for you, and mob you as a team. They'll flank you, bash you and try to pin you in with covering fire.

The other ACE modules are also worth considering. I don't use them myself, but they look solid and balanced.

Overhaul wise, both SkyRe and Reqiuem have much to offer.

I think a lot of people downplay the amount of roleplaying potential SkyRe has...you can still powergame very effectively with it, it's true, but T3nd0 actually made space for things like Speechcraft being important, a reworked spell system, disguises, traps and explosives....I like it, anyway. I also like the deleveled Skyrim settings.

Reqiuem is definitely more hardcore though, IMO. The roleplaying aspects are more intense too, and even I find myself disagreeing with some of their choices in this regard. I never got the impression that the Nine Divines really interacted with Tamriel too much, so I very much doubt that the gods would refuse to heal a thief, or that Talos would not impart his blessing on a member of the Imperial Army. In particular, trafficking with daedra is considered sinful and so becoming a Daedric Champion is much more costly. As someone who enjoys Dunmer culture and playing Dunmer characters, I fail to see why, for example, venerating Azura would be a bad thing. Or Meridia, for that matter /rant.

That said, I like the old school feel it has. I mean, going to Bleak Falls Barrow below level 10 is completely impossible, much like doing any of the Morrowind main plot is tough below level 5. You need silver, and fire, and lots of it. No fast travel cheese, no health regeneration, improved enemy AI, stamina matters a lot more, getting hurt imposes extra costs on stamina and magicka....I could go on and on, but they, like SkyRe, have a manual. Poison is a lot more effective too...apparently a certain mixture, with a daedra heart thrown in, can cause upwards of 7000 points of damage. It slows down the game, and makes the world much, much more dangerous. You'd probably be smart on skipping out on the Embershard Mines until level 4 or 5. Also has deleveled zones, like SkyRe.

For a vanilla game, I have a few "essential" mods I like to use. Stealth Skills Rebalanced by Kryptopyr is one of the best, and I strongly recommend it. In the normal game, Stealth is haxx. I mean, you know what it's like. He reworks Stealth to make it more difficult, but still viable, and dangerous at higher levels. He also reworks lockpicking and pickpocketing to make them much harder without perks. His lockpicking module is actually kinda hardcore...he not only makes it much harder, with and without perks, but he also removes lockpicks from most vendors and NPCs. You'll find them on bandits and other disreputable types, and fences will still sell them....but you need level 30, and a perk to craft them yourself. The prize, however, is at level 100, you can get a perk which literally lets you access all areas. A fitting prize for a master locksmith, right?

His other mods are also well worth looking at. Weapon and Armor fixes Remade, Smithing Perks Revised Remade and Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade do a lot to make crafting less...well, hacktacular. You'll need more resources to make things, more ore to make ingots, ore and ingots weight more and smithing proceeds more slowly...but at the same time, you can smith most things in game, and CCOR in particular comes with functionality to allow you to upgrade artifacts like the Nightingale Armor when you reach the right levels, meaning you're not penalised for finishing questlines too early. In conjunction with Trade and Barter, an improved merchandise system which allows merchant prices and funds to fluctuate, merchants to discriminate based on race, faction and friendship factors, and improvements to the Thieves Guild in terms of allowing most members become your followers, including Karliah (which seems to have been originally intended) and making Twlilight Hall a viable base of operations.

The Dance of Death is great for kill animations. Never play a game without that installed.

Armor wise...I would recommend Immersive Armors. They look good and add a lot of variety to the game. That said, I have a few armor mods already installed, and IA adds a LOT more to the list, so I normally skip out on it. The Bosmer Armor Pack, Morrowind Netch Leather Armor and Masters of Death Sicarius Armor (as a replacement for Dark Brotherhood armors) are my preferred ones. The last one is a little bit too close to Assassins Creed armor for my liking, but if you pick the black variety, it's not so bad, and still looks better than the vanilla rubbish. I also use Morrowind Looking Glass Retexture for glass armor.

Cloaks of Skyrim is also good, despite the regrettable clipping problems. The unique cloaks make it really worthwhile.

I play with mods that increase bounties for crimes...but also increase bounty rewards and guild questline rewards. Nothing insane...just a little level multiplier applied, plus taking into account the enemy type. I am not taking 100 gold for killing a freaking dragon. Speaking of which...

Dragon Combat Overhaul is a must. Dragons can now think. Well, not really, but they act in randomly enough ways to make it appear like they are thinking. They wont auto-land when reduced to 35% health, they wont stagger, everything they do with stagger you, they recover from being grounded more quickly, they use their abilities more often and they will call for backup, sometimes, which can result in up to three extra dragons joining the fight (I had that happen with the fight at the Western Watchtower...the Whiterun guards got slaughtered, Irileth aside). Oh, and Dovakhiin is now threat priority. You will be targeted, unless some very threatening attack draws the dragon's attention while you're hiding somewhere...like the aforementioned Irileth.

On the plus side, if you have a friendly dragon in the area, you can once a day call in an airstrike. Not tried it myself, and it doesn't always work (because, you know, thinking dragons and all) but it's apparently awesome when it does.

Also have Deadly Dragons, because no matter how awesome I am, I should not be able to two-shot a dragon with an enhanced crossbow, from stealth. DD comes with an MCM menu to allow you to toggle dragon health, magic resistance, damage bonuses and other fun things. I fully recommend playing with the Assault Mode options too.

The author of Dragon Combat Overhaul has also overhauled the Civil War, thus solving the two major problems with the game, that a game about civil war and dragons has shitty dragons and a shitty civil war. Apparently, he delved deep into the code and discovered that Bethesda basically rewrote the entire Civil War at the last minute. It was meant to be a massive campaign, with multiple quests to take each hold, and with a very real possibility of losing. Bethesda sealed all that up deep in the code somewhere before finishing it, and gave us the shitty version because of reasons.

Now you can actually lose the Civil War. You can lose individual battles, too. You can no longer stroll into the Palace of Kings as an Imperial Soldier, dressed in Imperial Armor, and not get severely roughed up. Sometimes you'll be going about your business quite peacefully, when your town will be besieged (once you activiate the Civil War questline, of course).

Ultimate Follower Overhaul and Improved Stealth AI. No more charging bravely into the fray before I say so. Oh, and Convienient Horses. Because as much as I love spending 1000 gold on something that dies in 5 minutes of Skyrim's mod-enhanced deadly climate, I love having an actual horse more.

Speaking of followers, Interesting NPCs and Inconsequential NPCs. The former adds a lot of NPCs, almost all of which feel like they should have been part of the original game. A skooma addicted Khajhit informer for the Thalmor, an ex-Thalmor Justicar, a Nord warrior imprisoned by a necromancer, an Imperial bard wandering the caves of Falkreath, an arrogant Khajhit warrior, a former adventuring Altmer mage...these are just a few I've discovered. The latter adds less glamorous personalities...the dockworkers and labourers and farmhands, the professional drinkers and mercenaries, travelling skooma dealers and the like. Between the two, Skyrim feels a lot more populated.

I also run with Deadlier Serana, because I pumped up the difficulty level quite a bit. Now she doesn't use mostly ice spells in a land of ice populated by things with ice resistance, and she has abilities and skills more beftting of a Daughter of Coldharbor.

Speaking of Vampires....Better Vampires is a great little mod. Configurable via MCM, but with mostly lore-friendly skills and abilities which improve vampire gameplay. I also go with the Vampire Hood mod made to work with this, which reduces sunlight penalties based on which stage your vampirism is at.

Lore based loading screens are good, as is Books Books Books. Because you never know when you may want to re-read The 36 Lessons of Vivec.

Think To Yourself Messages improves immersion. I like Traps Are Dangerous and its counterpart Traps Make Noise. I also like Hunter Traps, as a nomagical alternative to runes....though I wont deny, I do like running a Dunmer Nightblade who uses longbows and runes to horrific yet undeniable effectiveness. One consequence of improved Enemy AI and debuffed Stealth is that the enemy will hear your longbow shots, and so come running in your direction (sometimes they get it wrong, but fire enough arrows and they'll figure it out). Fire Runes in those oil patches in Nordic Ruins are just brutal.

I also used Balanced Magic, Bound Weapon Redux and Apocalypse Spells. Balanced magic improves combat magicka regeneration and makes it so that spell damage and duration increase with skill as well as with perks, meaning basic spells don't become completely useless later on. Bound Weapon Redux improves said weapons by adding in new variations (including Bound Woodaxes and Pickaxes), and by changing the perks so that your damage is now based on conjuration skill and, at the end of that perk tree, currently available magicka in addition to your skill with that weapon (one-handed etc). The Oblivion Binding perk will also possibly turn undead creatures and banish daedric ones, depending on your level and their level etc etc. Apocalypse adds lore-friendly and balanced spells which improve magic gameplay....especially Illusion, by far the most boring and overpowered school (need I mention Invisibility + Assassin's Blade + Mehrune's Razor?).

Proper Aiming is good...it means arrows go to where the cursor is while in 3rd person view mode. Arrow and Bolt Tweaks is also worth a look...make those arrows fly a little faster, find a few more (or less), recover more (or less) and buy more (or less). Some of these improvements already come as part of the Weapons and Armor Fixes though, so be sure to read through them properly before installing.

Run For Your Lives and When Vampires Attack are good. Stops civilians getting slaughtered when dragons and vampires come knocking. Instead, they'll lock themselves inside, while the guards take to the streets. Especially useful with the souped up vampires and dragons I tend to get mods for. It's also a good sign when something is seriously wrong...you go for a stroll in Whiterun and the streets are deserted, chances are it means vampires are at the gate. They can be a bit slow to unlock once the threat has passed, but the best thing to do is fast travel to another town and do your vendoring. By the time you return, things should be back to normal.

I forgot to mention Timing Is Everything. Another Kryptopyr mod, this allows you to change when certain quests will start. With more powerful foes, you don't necessarily want to be suffering vampire attacks at level 5 (I had this happen once....by the time the fight was over, it was 2 hours later, and I was level 7. I did also have a sweet Steel Katana of Burning and Ring of Stealth though) or go off to complete A Daedra's Best Friend at level 10. Configurable via MCM.

High Level Enemies is good. As I'm sure you know, most bandits etc stop levelling around 30 in the vanilla game, which is LAME. This means they continue to level, and there are choices to make it so that only the levelled foes in any encounter match your level, or so that every enemy does (not recommended, that latter one. Not with Duel and ACE, at least). I'm currently experimenting with Higher Level Gameplay, which promises to do similar things, but via a slightly different method.

Revenge of the Enemies - Enemy AI Overhaul is also worth your time. Completely compatible with Duel's AI improvements, involves no scripts and gives certain enemies lore-friendly abilities. So for instance, don't be surprised if lowly draugr suddenly blast you out of your boots with a shout. There's also a nasty nasty surprise at the end of Bleak Falls Barrow, though it's at least not as bad as Reqiuem. All I'll say is that you might want to leave some traps intact, and beat a swift retreat to win this one...or have significant frost resistance.

I'm currently experimenting with Skyrim Immersive Creatures, which has a patch for Revenge of the Enemies functionality. Because I'm a purist, I go for the lore-friendly version of this mod (configurable under MCM). Again, not experimented much, though I did get ambushed by a wolf pack immediately outside of Helgen. That was fun. There is also a "No Spiders" option, which I am eternally thankful for.

Because I hate frostbite spiders. Really, really hate them. Ugly fuckers with beady eyes, creeping around caves and shit. I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS SHIT. So use Insects Begone, which allows me to never see a spider again. Or chaurus, if they also bother you (they don't worry me). The mod maker does it in a clever way, it's not just a simple retexture which has a decent chance of failing under certain conditions and involves unnatural behaviour from the replaced creatures (bears for spiders, skeevers for chaurus). Instead, it replaces the entire skeleton. And should the mod fail, say because of load order or similar, anything with the keyword "spider" in its description gets transformed into a static fox. So yeah, fuck you spiders. You still get frostbite venom (I like to think the invading bears ate the spiders and so gained some venomous properties) and spider eggs are now "invading bear bees" which are found in honeypots around the bear nest.

Immersive HUD is useful, and sometimes even fun. Ever tried shooting a bow without a crosshair to tell you where you're aiming? You can now...and you can actually get pretty good at it, too. If you like the idea of a less intrusive HUD, but want to keep the ranged crosshair you can...or you can download Sniper Bows. Each bow comes with two crosshairs built in, one for crouched and one for standing shots. They look a little goofy, but it's not so bad.

I also like lockpick graduation. Since lockpicking is harder, I like to balance it out with version C of this mod ("Vex's gift"). In fact, a lot of my modding philosophy can be like that. Install something that makes the game harder, install something which makes that a little bit easier for the sake of balance.

So because enemies are more dangerous, I've gone for Better Strong and More Effective - Deadly Poisons. As far as I can see, this is the only poison mod which is not ridiculously overpowered or simply involves multiplying the damage bonus (see "ridiculously overpowered"). And since Duel makes stamina much more important, poisons which drain stamina are now not entirely worthless. In fact, given how dangerous power attacks and bashes can be, you may consider poisons of that kind to be more useful than straight up damage. This also improves the poison damage from enemies.

I have Morrowind Imports, so I don't have to go to Solstheim to get netch leather, chitin and netch jelly. Now my Dunmer Nightblade can look the part of a proper Morrowind expat, and make paralysis poisons on the side.

I dont use too many graphical mods, as my graphics card is sorely outdated. However, I do use a few. Obviously, Climates of Tamriel is a must. Along with that, I like Enhanced Lighting and FX. Makes the game darker, but lit areas are much brighter and much more realistic. This also helps with the debuffed stealth, as it affects the in-game lighting settings and so has an impact on detection rates.

I use Nightingale HD Prime for the Nightingale armor, alongside the Carbon Fiber Nightingale Weapons Retexture (with the CCOR Nightingale Arrows optional mod). Because the Nightingale Armor is, hands down, the best looking piece of armor in that game, and comes from the best faction storyline, and so deserves a bit of love. The weapons retextures were designed to go alongside the HD armor, and they really do make you look the part. I have a 1k retexture of Auriel's Bow, because that thing was ugly, and use Ecthelion's Dawnguard Weapons (performance version). I have BetrayelSeeker's Ancient Falmer Armor retexture and, if my computer could handle it, I'd install all the aMidian Book of Silence retextures as well.

In addition to that, I have the Enhanced Night Sky, which is just dazzling to look at, the Static Mesh Improvement Mod, Skyrim Sunglare and Glowing Ore Veins.

My graphics card cannot handle an ENB. I know this. It would melt my laptop. However, I have successfully used I Can't Believe It's Not An ENB. And I do endorse it. To do so, you need Imaginator and Enhanced Lighting and FX. Dynavision doesn't hurt, either. It's a bit oversaturated in places, but Imaginator can resolve that with the right input values.

It also unfortunately ruins the Quality World Map - With Roads mod, by making the colours all look terrible. However, here are a couple of examples. Here is an Imperial in Bosmer amor, killing an Orc bandit:

(http://i.imgur.com/naKvcpy.png)

And another bandit:

(http://i.imgur.com/GpIzjQ3.png?1)

Weapons wise, I use the Daedric Dawnbreaker Mod, because otherwise it becomes a bit underpowered in the later game. This also allows it to be improved by the Daedric Smithing perk. I also go for Immersive Weapons, though Weapons of the Third Era is also a perfectly valid choice, and both are supported by CCOR. And I also go for Crossbows Revamped, because I think there is no good reason why I shouldn't have ebony or glass crossbow bolts. However, the damage progression seems a bit...off, I'm not sure if that's because of CCOR+WF, Duel (which also slightly increases damage) or ABT. This mod also adds crossbows and bolts to the level distribution lists for enemies, though only unenhanced ones (that's still a Dwemer/Dawnguard secret). There's also a badass looking Nightingale Crossbow out there...no enchantments, just a model, but it hits as hard as the Dwemer one when upgraded to Legendary, can be enhanced and can be enchanted.

As they put it: "Skyrim GEMS is a 1-page, quick-reference catalog of lore-friendly Gameplay Enhancement Mods for Skyrim with a focus on mods that create a more realistic, immersive and challenging experience."

Oh, and one more: I use Dragon Soul Relinquishment. This allows you to use dragon souls to obtain perk points, carrying bonuses, improved shout cooldown times and other bonuses. Because I've made dragons more deadly, I set it to three dragon souls for one perk point, which I think is more than fair. The mod sets it to five, but I reckon a perk point is worth at least one fully unlocked shout. You can configure it in MCM, but you must be accepted by the Greybeards before you can use this (ie; complete the Jurgen Hornblower quest and be formally recognised as Dovakhiin), and you can only relinquish the souls while in High Hrothgar.

I only have console, so all my mods are glitches. I use "turn into a werewolf while talking to a follower to equip multiple pieces of equipment from their inventory into single slots" to wear enough gauntlets to make unarmed viable later into the game, as well as equipping enough Amulets of Talos to negate shout cooldown.

Then I herd entire villages into corners with Unrelenting Force and shout at them until they're all dead.

If you want to get fancy, you can use a shout that slows time, then use Unrelenting Force, then while they're flying through they air you chase them and punch them a bit before they hit the ground.But just screaming people off cliffs is a classic.

If you want to get fancy, you can use a shout that slows time, then use Unrelenting Force, then while they're flying through they air you chase them and punch them a bit before they hit the ground.But just screaming people off cliffs is a classic.

I just want to do what you first said. Scream at people until they die.

I've only had one weird bug I caught on video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RjKsWIQuwA&feature=share&list=PLorAoQOlrl_rOfGQttEDpZA36i4QpYIqH

Had plenty of actual bugs, but only managed to record that one. The best was probably the endlessly rotating cart at the start of the game. It just kept rolling over and over while Ralof was talking about how much he liked juniper berry mead.

I'm not sure what happened either. I think it may have been some kind of conflict between The Dance of Death mod (which adds killcams/affects the percentage chance of getting them) and the Stealth Kills for Followers mod, and somehow it registered Lydia was to get a kill cam on the bandit, but decided it would be from a totally different direction to the one she was facing. Even though Lydia's not a stealth follower.

The game is buggy as hell anyway, even without mods. This could be an entirely vanilla problem.

This really makes me want to play Skyrim again now. Even though I was never able to finish the main quest before since every time I took 10 steps into the...Dragon Temple (?)... and started fighting it kept freezing. Over and over and over...

If you're on PC, that could be due to memory allocation problems (the last Skyrim patch screwed the pooch on that), or a vanilla bug that has been fixed by the Unofficial Skyrim Patch and the subsequent DLC patches. The former can also be dealt with, by using Skyrim Script Extender (needed for most good mods) and some .ini file edits.

Thanks! Console unfortunately, but saving those for future reference. Only recently returned the world of PCs and internet at home. Much preferred playing Morrowind on the PC, though currently have it on x-box. All the mods you were discussing above make me jealous too, but would hate to buy the same game again. We'll see.

On the chance that it maybe is still a memory issue, since I last tried playing Skyrim, I cleared up a bunch of memory on the x-box, deleting useless crap, so maybe that will help. Worth a shot at least.

In this episode, we recruit Sten, an apparently murderous Qunari soldier.

For sake of reference, the Qunari are a religion, not a race, but many members of the Qunari are of a race different to the others in Thedas (the lore says they're called "kossith"). The Qunari fought the entire of Westeros to a standstill during the New Exalted Marches 300 years previously, using advanced weapons such as gunpowder and armored ships.

David Gaider said, in terms of how the Chantry and people in the rest of Thedas view them, the Qunari are a sort of militant Islamic Borg. Which isn't entirely unfair. The Qunari view society as a kind of unified body. Everyone has a role, which they cannot deviate from, not without becoming a heretic. For example, "Sten" is not Sten's actual name. It is his rank, and other Stens are encountered in DA2. But his rank, role and identity are so closely intertwined as to be virtually inseperable, because that is what the Qun demands.

Oh, and Leliana tries to flirt with Morrigan, under the guise of fashion advice.

In this episode, we recruit Sten, an apparently murderous Qunari soldier.

For sake of reference, the Qunari are a religion, not a race, but many members of the Qunari are of a race different to the others in Thedas (the lore says they're called "kossith"). The Qunari fought the entire of Westeros to a standstill during the New Exalted Marches 300 years previously, using advanced weapons such as gunpowder and armored ships.

David Gaider said, in terms of how the Chantry and people in the rest of Thedas view them, the Qunari are a sort of militant Islamic Borg. Which isn't entirely unfair. The Qunari view society as a kind of unified body. Everyone has a role, which they cannot deviate from, not without becoming a heretic. For example, "Sten" is not Sten's actual name. It is his rank, and other Stens are encountered in DA2. But his rank, role and identity are so closely intertwined as to be virtually inseperable, because that is what the Qun demands.

Oh, and Leliana tries to flirt with Morrigan, under the guise of fashion advice.

Eh with more memory freed up at least on there, I'll give it another shot and see what happens. For all I know there may be some updates or patches that came out before I had the internet at home that may help.

Nice clarification on the Qunari thing too. I knew it was primarily a religion, but never really saw (noticed) any reference to what Sten's (and the others') race was, giving me the impression it was sort of a race & religion mix (even though in DA2 there are more references of other(s) attempting to live by the Qun. So I guess it's more a matter of them not really making an obvious announcement about the race of the (majority of) Qunari referenced in the game.

They were all meant to have horns, like in DA2, but they couldn't figure out the helmet issue in time for the release. In the end, they declared Sten didn't have horns because some kossith are born without them, and that's seen as "lucky" in their culture.

In DA:I, you'll be able to play a Kossith as well. No word on if you can be Qunari as well, though I suspect not.

I'll do two uploads tomorrow to make up for the lack of one on Monday.

http://youtu.be/_IpNT7ryQMA

In this episode, we kill bandits and get paid. Because the Chantry couldn't possibly get that body of professional doers of violence called Templars to kill a few bandits. Probably because bandits, unlike most mages in Templar care, can actually fight back and someone might get hurt.

Next episode is also about 40 minutes long. That's because I'll be using the party camp for most character dialogue and related stuff.

However, the next two episodes after that are much shorter (as in, combined they are shorter than that one), as they deal with the Stone Prisoner DLC, and we will be having a little vote on how to deal with the demon at the end.

Next episode is also about 40 minutes long. That's because I'll be using the party camp for most character dialogue and related stuff.

However, the next two episodes after that are much shorter (as in, combined they are shorter than that one), as they deal with the Stone Prisoner DLC, and we will be having a little vote on how to deal with the demon at the end.

You say that now....all I'm gonna say is, wait until the final sequences of the game. And Dragon Age II. And probably Inquisition. That's all I'm saying.

:lol: I love Sandal - and certainly hope he makes it into Inquisition.

The last few weeks have been a rush of getting ready to move office locations and this week setting up new office space, but things are starting to get back to normal pace, so looking forward to these episodes.

There's no way he wont be in Inquisition. Remember at the end of DA2, Bodahn mentions going to Val Royeaux.

I would actually prefer to see Herren and Wade again. Theory has it Wade is meant to represent Bioware - the master craftsman, an eye to detail and working on bespoke pieces, living in poverty as a result - and Herren as Electronic Arts - the suave businessman, eye always on the bottom line.

No, it's defintely worth knowing these things. I'll start paying more attention to post-production again...I have been getting kinda lazy on that front.

Part 15 is up http://youtu.be/9rm5wONy2Es Poll is whether we let "Kitty" use the girl as a meatsuit, or we turn it into a pair of gloves. Poll will run for a week to let people catch up and, more importantly, because I'll be too busy writing to record anything.

There's no way he wont be in Inquisition. Remember at the end of DA2, Bodahn mentions going to Val Royeaux.

Good point - been a little while since I've played DA2, but I'll look forward to seeing them then.

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I would actually prefer to see Herren and Wade again. Theory has it Wade is meant to represent Bioware - the master craftsman, an eye to detail and working on bespoke pieces, living in poverty as a result - and Herren as Electronic Arts - the suave businessman, eye always on the bottom line.

That would be pretty cool. I liked the interactions with and between them, and was a bit disappointed when I had no real reason to go back to their shop. Really liked Wade. That's quite the interesting theory there too. It would be nice to see them worked back in.

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Which may be why they didn't make it into DA2.

:lol:

ETA: Also, the mod that puts a chest at party camp makes me sad again that I'm playing on a console.

No, it's defintely worth knowing these things. I'll start paying more attention to post-production again...I have been getting kinda lazy on that front.

Part 15 is up http://youtu.be/9rm5wONy2Es Poll is whether we let "Kitty" use the girl as a meatsuit, or we turn it into a pair of gloves. Poll will run for a week to let people catch up and, more importantly, because I'll be too busy writing to record anything.

Watched and voted. Pretty sure I eventually killed the demon, but it's possible I may have let it go without the girl. Might as well go with all out possession this time (maybe I did that?). Though I know 2 of your party members will be quite unhappy with a decision of anything but KILL IT NOW!

Cain, if you want, I'll split this once the TDS creep finishes his shit.

I am tempted to write a forum from scratch for principiadiscoursia.com which turns every post into almost-readable word salad so it can serve as a home for people who have no desire to communicate useful information to one another.

Also, vote counted. I wont be doing a final tally until next Monday due to my hilarious work schedule, however (essay today, work tomorrow night, Friday off, work Saturday night, get back on a normal sleep schedule Sunday).

I should probably explain the options a bit more, as I did kinda simplify it.

1) outright possession. We let Kitty take over Amalia.2) Refuse to negotiate3) Lie to the father that Amalia is dead4) Force the father to help us fight Kitty5) Promise to set Kitty free but she cannot have Amalia, keep to that deal6) Promise to set Kitty free while telling her she cannot have Amalia, let Kitty bribe us to take Amalia7) Betray Kitty by promising to help, then killing her

The way I see it, most people are voting for 1), but some of you may prefer 5) or 6) or feel that maybe double-crossing a desire demon is a fun game. Just letting people tailor their choices more effectively.

This has inspired me to repurchase Dragon Age for PS3, seeing as I was trading in AC: Black Flag anyway. Store had both Origin and 2, and I've played the hell out of Origin so picked up a copy of DA2, because I bought it when it first came out, hated all of the companion options and only got to the second act.

I'm pretty sure the companions in DA2 are actively designed to piss you off. I can really only stand Varric, Carver and Isabella...and even Carver's a whiny prick for a whole Act.

Which is probably why Varric's the only returning, recruitable character for DA:I.

Oh god, yes. I thought the companions in Origins could get whiny, but 2 is like a non-stop cry/bitch-fest. Varric they did really well with, I liked him and am glad he'll be back for Inquisition. Isabella was pretty good too. In the few plays I've done, Carver is usually dead before we make it Kirkwall, so have only dealt with him briefly, though he's still not overly pleasant to be around. Everyone else is pretty grating. Considering a lot of the troubles in that game revolve around/involve Anders, I find him somewhat bearable except for, you know, all the crying. All this talk about whiny characters did inspire me to start another play-through though.

And in case it hasn't been tallied yet or needs to be more specific since you broke it down further above, I'm keeping my vote for this stage in DA:O for outright possession.

I know a lot of people didn't like the change in Ander's personality at all, but I felt it was justified (heh) plotwise, even if I also preferred the old Anders. And Carver is pretty annoying, but assuming you make the right choices in Act 1, he gets his act together. A sense of purpose does wonders for the lad.

It also kinda means that if you both want a decent party to RP with, as well as having a tactically functional one, you have limited options. If you're not a tank and you'd like one, you have to use a terrible character.

Though in DA2, a tank is basically pointless if you play a Shadow or Force Mage. And if you don't play a Shadow or Force Mage, WAYSA?

But yeah, definitely. Gameplay and roleplay segregation is of course a huge design issue in RPGs, and not one they're probably ever going to resolve to my satisfaction, at the very least. Probably not without a quantum processor, anyway.

Of course, a lot of problems with DA2 are due to a, IIRC, 9 month production cycle. I mean, ridiculously rushed doesn't even begin to describe it. When you compare the 5 years they had for Origins, well...you can see why their plans kinda fell apart. From what I heard, DA2 was actually a repurposed plot for an "inbetween game" that would bridge the events of Origin to Inquisition....in other words, DA:I was intended to be the second main title.

Which would explain a lot about DA2, including why Act III feels like it was tacked on at the end, and why despite the exceedingly rushed production schedule they nevertheless had the Exalted March expansion pack all planned out, before that project was wrapped into DA:I proper. I imagine that, if Act III were not intended as an opening act for DA:I, then Exalted March definitely was.

I know a lot of people didn't like the change in Ander's personality at all, but I felt it was justified (heh) plotwise, even if I also preferred the old Anders. And Carver is pretty annoying, but assuming you make the right choices in Act 1, he gets his act together. A sense of purpose does wonders for the lad.

And noted. I'll be recording tomorrow.

Oh I agree, there's definitely good reason for it. Just you know, so many Debbie Downers. But even still, I find him, aside from Varric and perhaps Isabella, the least annoying of the bunch.

And I'll have to play through a game soon where he makes it through the opening act. I had started to, but after getting internet again at home, it insisted I sign back in with my xbox screen name, which password I had long since saved and forgotten, to access this game, that I wanted to play offline...by myself. So, another time then.

Of course, a lot of problems with DA2 are due to a, IIRC, 9 month production cycle. I mean, ridiculously rushed doesn't even begin to describe it. When you compare the 5 years they had for Origins, well...you can see why their plans kinda fell apart. From what I heard, DA2 was actually a repurposed plot for an "inbetween game" that would bridge the events of Origin to Inquisition....in other words, DA:I was intended to be the second main title.

Which would explain a lot about DA2, including why Act III feels like it was tacked on at the end, and why despite the exceedingly rushed production schedule they nevertheless had the Exalted March expansion pack all planned out, before that project was wrapped into DA:I proper. I imagine that, if Act III were not intended as an opening act for DA:I, then Exalted March definitely was.

Pretty interesting, and DA2 makes sense when looked at in that context. I had always felt like it had seemed a bit rushed. Especially getting to the last act, and then...it's over! And I was kind of like, "is that it?" .

I've still not recorded yet. Due to working lots of nights, university work and getting a new kitchen installed (which only happens during the day, and is playing merry havoc with my sleep schedule).

With regards to the Shadow Rogue, I would've gone for the Assassin specialization first. Mark of Death and fully upgraded Assassinate turn you from a glass cannon into a goddamn crystal Predator Drone. Not to say the Shadow isn't powerful as well, you get a retardedly powerful critical damage buff, but the Assassin specialization is certainly the better of the two.

Ideally, you want a build that looks something like this http://biowarefans.com/dragon-age-2-talent-builder/#rzMYckRX1telBFsHEaVQrwuSYokRc0HtEDC

For a dual-wielder, anyway. If you're going for archery...well, all I'm going to say is that Disorientating Criticals + Glyph of Paralysis + Virulent and Corrosive Walking Bomb can clear out entire enemy spawns in one go.

Duellist isn't bad, it's just a bit boring. You get all these insane buffs and modes which add even more buffs on top of your existing ones. The only interesting ability is Throw the Guantlet, which is basically Backstab + Assassinate.

I've still not recorded yet. Due to working lots of nights, university work and getting a new kitchen installed (which only happens during the day, and is playing merry havoc with my sleep schedule).

Yea I can't imagine that leaves much time for games and recording, but will look forward to the next installments :)

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With regards to the Shadow Rogue, I would've gone for the Assassin specialization first. Mark of Death and fully upgraded Assassinate turn you from a glass cannon into a goddamn crystal Predator Drone. Not to say the Shadow isn't powerful as well, you get a retardedly powerful critical damage buff, but the Assassin specialization is certainly the better of the two.

Ideally, you want a build that looks something like this http://biowarefans.com/dragon-age-2-talent-builder/#rzMYckRX1telBFsHEaVQrwuSYokRc0HtEDC

For a dual-wielder, anyway. If you're going for archery...well, all I'm going to say is that Disorientating Criticals + Glyph of Paralysis + Virulent and Corrosive Walking Bomb can clear out entire enemy spawns in one go.

Duellist isn't bad, it's just a bit boring. You get all these insane buffs and modes which add even more buffs on top of your existing ones. The only interesting ability is Throw the Guantlet, which is basically Backstab + Assassinate.

Yea, if I had actually thought about it, I would have done Assassin first, which I normally have, but then I got all "Ooooh, new & shiny". That talent builder's really neat and is a good reminder to pay attention to the specialist set of talents more. I've definitely used some, but it seems that I've probably underutilized it. Very interesting on the archer note too - I can see that working splendidly. Archery is another talent I haven't really done much with. I don't tend to go for it (though last time I played DAO I tried to focus on it more) as I usually don't need an extra ranged attack since I usually drag Varric around with me (and I drag Varric around because I'm not an Archer...derp. Well, also because he's on of the least annoying companions).

The thing with archery is that, pinning shot aside, much of the archery tree is utterly worthless on Nightmare difficulty, because of the friendly fire aspect. You need a Force Mage for the sort of crowd control that requires.

With an archer, you want to concentrate on making your auto-attacks hit as hard as possible and as fast as possible, and focus on the occasional massive DPS spike from the specialization trees. So something along these lines (http://biowarefans.com/dragon-age-2-talent-builder/#rhuEtDCevH1Y0X1ktelBEvDFHsaVrwQuS). The gameplay after that is simplicity itself, if a bit visually boring.

Also, because you can inflict damage at range, you can skip some points in constitution and put more into dexterity and cunning. Although, the decoy and stealth talents make you pretty survivable no matter which way you decide to play...

So, I've successfully experimented with WTF - Random Encounter Zones. Very successfully, actually. I haven't met anything insanely overpowered yet, but...well, yeah I suppose I have, actually. At the end of Bleak Falls Barrow there was a draugr scourge who could and did one-shot my character with melee and shouts. That was a bit rough on a level 8 Imperial nightblade. Since then, I've been taking on enemies about 10 levels above my own on a fairly frequent basis, culminating in an epic battle with a Draugr Scourge Lord at level 13 in Shroud Hearth Burrow. All on Master difficulty I should add...it might've been a bit less rough on something lower, but expert is for scrubs.

Assuming it's OK with yourself I'll copy some of the messages into this thread.

I've done something stupid so I'm currently playing the hunt the CTD bug. I'm running a hyper-realistic setup which makes leaving the house a dangerous proposition. Hell, STAYING in a house is a dangerous proposition as you'll probably starve or dehydrate to death in relatively short order.

With regards to your CTD, do you use BOSS to organise your mod load order? Lots of apparently insignificant things, like having The Dance of Death before DCO, can cause CTDs to plague a setup. Not that BOSS is perfect, but it mostly gets things right.

Duel - Combat Realism. A light tweak to the mod system, this nevertheless has a big impact. Enemy combat AI is more intelligent - bandits will attempt to swarm your position and flank you, as well as blocking more in combat. Furthermore, stamina becomes more critical. Blocking will reduce stamina a lot...and both you and the enemy will get staggered much more frequently. When staggered, you take massive extra damage. The idea with Duel is that the fighter who has the advantage, and can carry that momentum through, wins. I use the Hardcore version, the normal version however is also meant to be quite good, and places a greater emphasis on blocking and timed attacks. Weapon and armor values are slightly increased, so this should go near the end of your mod order.

Dragon Combat Overhaul - makes dragons more unpredictable. Much more unpredictable. Dragon "limit breaks" are changed, so dragons are not automatically dropped when they reach 30% health and stay on the ground. Dragons will target Dovakhiin more frequently. Dragons will stagger you when landing and when taking off. When low on health, dragons may attempt a devastating AoE attack to turn the tide. Dragons may call other dragons for help. Dragons will use their shouts more frequently and more intelligently (such as using Meteor Storm at the start of a fight). They will fly in a much prettier fashion, and fall out of the sky much more realistically. Does not affect dragon health or damage output - only their AI package. Therefore it's compatible with all dragon mods. Which brings me to....

Deadly Dragons - this mod makes dragons tougher, deal more damage, better armor etc. Has an Assault Mode which makes dragons attack you within a certain timescale - I would recommend making cities safe zones if you intend to use this, as Arthmoor's Run for Your Lives mod wont recognise it as an attack, and so citizens will definitely get slaughtered. Incidentally, install Arthmoor's Run For Your Lives and When Vampires Attack - everyone runs inside and locks their doors, except Guards, Companions, Dawnguard and Vigilants of Stendarr, who you would expect to fight back. Back on track, I prefer the "loremonger" option, as it means you only get lore-friendly dragons spawned.

ASIS - enemy spawns can be larger, and will act more intelligently. Allows enemies to use potions, access spells and perks added by mods and randomize spawns. Quite technical, so read all the documentation before installing.

WTF - Random Encounter Zones. WTF assigns random minimum levels to all encounter zones; either fully random or chance-based. So no longer will enemies level directly with you, and be boring and routine. Some enemies will be strong enough to melt your face off, others will be surprisingly easy.

Revenge of the Enemies - overhauls enemy AI, but also gives certain enemies new abilities. All draugr will know at least one shout now. Vampires will be exceedingly deadly, using their batform and Drain Life attacks to strike quickly and confuse those fighting against them. Falmer can turn invisible. Certain bosses, such as Potema, will gain abilities they never had before. Also expect a nasty surprise at the end of Bleak Falls Barrow.

Recommend:

Crossbow basic collection - adds all the missing crossbows and bolts from the game. Because what's better than a dwarven crossbow that ignores 50% of armor? A daedric crossbow that does the same.

Combat Drama Overhaul and Dance of Death - get cool kill animations.

Dovahkriid - the Dragon Lords. Adds 13 extremely dangerous dragons into fixed areas of the game. Said dragons have lore-friendly names and are considered Alduin's top lieutenants - they are extremely dangerous with Deadly Dragons and DCO installed.

ACE Realistic Fighting - adds bonuses and minuses for weapon state, armor quality and stance. Very realistic, but also very brutal when combined with Duel - Combat Realism. I've been virtually one-hit as a light armor wearer, whereas heavy armor wearers become tanks by comparison.

Apocalypse Spell Package - adds a bunch of lore-friendly and balanced spells to the game.

Immersive Patrols - creates a series of encounter patrols in the wilderness, from Imperial and Stormcloak troops to Dawnguard to dragon cultists and werewolves. Not compatible with Open Cities.

More Bandit Camps - does what it says on the tin. At least some camps are themed, however, like the Cammona Tong Skooma camp in Riften.

Improved Dragon Shouts - because you'll need them. Unfortunately, will also improve the shouts of dragons and high-level draugr, though...

Traps Make Noise - Traps Are More Dangerous. Creates detection events for setting off traps, in addition to scaling damage with your level.

High Level Enemies (may conflict with WTF, never tried both) - makes enemies level with you, and increases the enemy level cap to somewhere around level 60. Can be quite difficult with Duel - imagine getting surrounded by three Bandit Outlaws at Level 10. Personally would not use alongside Duel and ACE, as it can make the game nearly impossible.

SkyRe - game overhaul. SkyRe's combat system makes stamina much more important, adds bleed damage and adds perks for different varieties of weapons. However, it will conflict with a lot of the above, as SkyRe overhauls almost all aspects of the game.

Requiem - game overhaul. Requiem's combat system is even harsher than SkyRe, and has been compared favourably with Dark Souls. Like SkyRe, stamina is vital, and enemies are deleveled.

There are also a number of adventure mods which use the base game engine to make things more difficult. I've heard good things about Agent of Righteous Might, the Oblivion Realms series, Moon and Star etc. but I've yet to try them.

If you want to make cities more populated, I recommend Interesting NPCs and Inconsequential NPCs. The former will also add a number of quests to the game.

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(I bitch that one of the few problems that will remain is that all the dungeons are very nice tunnels)

Well, I know some of those adventure mods mentioned at the bottom have confusing layouts. In particular, the final assault in Agent of Righteous Might is meant to be confusing as hell. They will only take a couple of hours to solve, according to the modders, but that's still far more complex than most of Skyrim.

Some of the others may also be less linear (the Lost Wonders of Mzark claims to be as such). Check http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/searchresults/?src_cat=88 for anything that looks good.

That aside, I'd suggest maybe Enhanced Lighting and FX. Wont change the layout, but the dungeon will be much darker, necessitating the use of torches and adding to immersion.

Once I've got my various modlists sorted out (I think I'm going to have 6 - immersion, SkyRe, Reqiuem, Vanilla Plus, Survivalism and Vanilla Bugfix) I'll send them on to you. I strongly suggest checking out the Skyrim Mod Organiser (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?) as opposed to the Nexus Mod Manager - it uses a temporary folder to install the files, meaning they do not install directly into the game, meaning they can be removed much more safely AND it allows for your profiles, so as long as you can keep your game saves separate, you can have multiple different mod regimes running.

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(Comments regarding game difficulty being somewhat low, even when cranking settings? Unsure.)

In that case, I do recommend checking out Requiem and SkyRe. The first is roleplaying and realism - so no fast travel, much deadlier combat, much more consequences for your actions (theft and murder deny you the blessings of the divine), stamina is used per attack (and having less stamina increases spell costs), armor increases casting costs and a bunch of other things. A few modders, like the Hunterborn creator, use it in addition to Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases for a deeper immersive experience.

SkyRe is similar in some ways, but I would say it is more focused on survivalism. SkyRe merges the pickpocket and lockpicking tree, allowing for the creation of the "Wayfarer" tree, which oversees things like wilderness survival, crafting traps, frost/poison/disease resistance, hunting and knowledge of wildlife. The Wayfarer tree was designed for full functionality with Frostfall. SkyRe is a little more forgiving when it comes to combat, IMO, but it's also more realistic than standard Skyrim. Stamina is still important, but it regenerates much faster, meaning combat can still proceed at a fairly brisk pace, regardless of level.

Here's my current vanilla plus setup, if you're interested (load order included). Might give you some ideas for things you'd like to add:

Most of my mods revolve around dragons, better fighting, the Thieves Guild or the Dawnguard because, well, really, everything else in Skyrim is kinda naff anyway. Also making Riften look awesome, because apart from Windhelm it's the city with the most potential for character that was squandered. I'll probably update the list with more later, but that's it for now.

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(further realism discussion)

Economy wise, I've found Trade and Barter to be a balanced experience. It sets much higher costs for crafting materials, adds in cost variables for player race and faction status, fluctuating gold for merchants, cost variables based on player knowledge (skill in smithing/alchemy etc) and can be tweaked via the MCM to create a much more expensive Skyrim. It does need a patch if you intend to use it with Requiem, but otherwise it is highly compatible. When combined with Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade/Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade/Smithing Perks Overhaul Remade by the same author, smithing becomes a less viable path to glory, because ores and ingots go up in price and weight, you need more to make weapons and armor and obtaining the skills takes longer (more in line with how other skills level up).

Realistic Room Rental is made by the same person who made Realistic Needs and Diseases. As you know, with that mod you need to sleep...and with this mod, sleeping becomes more expensive. It does open up other options with regards to renting a room on a semi-permament basis and other things.

With those two, you should be able to create a more expensive Skyrim experience. If you want to go beyond that...well, the guy who makes much of the patches for Requiem made his own patch available, Requiem - Hard Times, which makes everything ultra-expensive, enemies drop little loot and other fun things (the guy is a bit of a masochist though - he tends to play on Legendary difficulty and uses the Alternate Start - Left For Dead to kick off his games...*).

I sometimes balance these with Bounty Gold, which allows you to get levelled gold for various quests, such as killing dragons, giants and bandits. My feeling is that, with Skyrim being a warzone, Jarls are willing to spend where military necessity dictates, though you could also argue that with the amount of mercenaries Skyrim is attacting (assuming you installed Inconsequential NPCs) that the price is decreased due to competition. Still, I would expect more than 100 gold for dragon slaying, unless 100 gold were somehow a significant amount of money.

Stealth wise, there is only one mod even worth considering. Stealth Skills Rebalanced, by the guy who did Trade and Barter, Weapon And Armor Fixes etc etc. It makes stealth harder, but legitimately so. It's still playable, but you have to be smart, and with the upgrades from Duel and Revenge of the Enemies, hostile characters will be much quicker to detect something is wrong. Light is far more critical a factor with this mod, and sound to a certain extent as well. As such, it synergises well with Enhanced Lights and FX, as that mod does strongly affect light in a given area.

My only problem with SSR is not with the stealth mechanics itself, but the way it rebalances lockpicking. Wearing gauntlets gives you an automatic -25 penalty to lockpicking, and the lockpicking system is legitimately the toughest one in the game. Yes, harder than Requiem or SkyRe. Picking an adept lock is literally impossible without the right perks, even with "Vex's Gift" (see below). He also reduces massively the number of available lockpicks by making them only carried by bandits, thieves, assassins and fences (though you are in Riften, so this shouldn't be a problem). And you need 35 in lockpicking, along with some spent perks, to craft your own lockpicks at a forge.

Given the combat upgrades, it may be wise to skip SSR, but for a more stealth-orientated game, it's definitely worth considering. I mean, I'm thinking of going full out with such a game if I can sort out the right modlist for it in the future.

There is also Stealth Tools by Borgut1337. A couple of these are interesting, and have been already integrated into SkyRe (so don't install alongside that, it's unnecessary). He adds some "trick" arrows from the Thief series of games, water ones to put out fires, rope ones to get to hard to access places (and maybe noise arrows for distraction? cannot remember). Additionally, he adds masks into the game. When you commit a crime wearing a mask, you don't get a bounty. HOWEVER, you cannot be seen putting the mask on or taking it off. He also adds in functionality for automatically killing sleeping or unaware enemies, but I've found they don't always work as intended (due to the animations, I think). But the rest is pretty good.

There is a shortcuts mod on Skyrimgems under the Thievery section, which adds hidden routes into every city in Skyrim. It's a good mod, and it definitely works, though it may conflict with city overhaul mods like Dawn of Riften (I have yet to test this).

If you're not interested in SSR, there are a number of lesser mods which can add elements of realism into stealth. SkyRealism has a mod which increases how alert enemies become after detecting a sneak attack or spotting you. No changes to how easy it is to sneak, only to how enemies react (this may be redundant with Duel AI upgrades).

I've also heard good things about the Stealth and Immersion Set http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/26286/? though again I've not tried it. Incidentally, that recommendation came via Erkeil, whose own overhaul may interest you http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/r-s-o/ In fact, alongside my stealth mod build, I think I need one for ERSO.

I would definitely recommend, at the very least, one of the crime detection radius overhaul mods, along with a mod which adds higher bounties for crimes. I use this one for the latter, as it has a nice variable based on hold which, IMO, adds a little to immersion http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11862/?

I'll send my updated mod lists in the next PM.

*and left for dead quite literally lives up to the name. I had a character wake up somewhere on the coast between Windhelm and Winterhold. No armor, no weapons, nothing except some mining clothes, and I had to make a run for Winterhold avoiding ice wolves, bandits, ice wraiths, bears and at least one giant. Fortunately, I lucked out, as an Imperial Patrol was trying to conquer Winterhold or something stupid and when they died I grabbed their gear. Still, it means you start off with no money, no equipment and no quick, viable way of obtaining either.

Just because I forgot to mention it with the previous stealth mods, Nightingale Hall above converts said Hall into a viable base of operations for Karliah and the Dragonborn. It also allows for Karliah to become a follower, which it looks like was originally intended in the game anyway and additionally allows Karliah to craft her deadly paralyse poison for you, should you request it. I like it, but then, as I've said many times, the Thieves Guild has, by far, the best quest series in the vanilla game. There is also a mod in my previous modlist called "Following Mercer" which, apparently, leaves clues as to where Mercer Frey stashed some of the Thieves Guild loot. I've never tried it, but it looks interesting and potentially fun.

Because Requiem is notoriously hard on its own merits and has few compatible mods, it's actually a good game for a slightly less capable rig. Hundreds of mods are not required, and would probably detract from the game atmosphere anyway. It's also consequently a good candidate for combining gameplay with some of the less intensive graphical improvements and ENBs. I used "I can't belive it's not an ENB" with it previously, which I felt was a good fit. Said mod does make the map look pretty horrible, but since fast travel isn't an option it's not so much of an issue.

Essentially, there's a mod on Skyrim gems which adds small gradients onto any lock you are picking. You can choose very wide gradients, somewhat more refined ones or "Vex's Gift", which will give you very fine gradients. So long as you can keep track of them, you can know exactly where your lockpick was when you screwed up, and so pick locks more efficiently.

Lockpicking is still a complete bastard with SSR though, even with this installed. The sweet spot is so small that even finding it usually involves breaking 2 lockpicks on anything about novice, and since you probably cannot craft or buy lockpicks at the early stages of the game....

My current setup is somewhat similar to Cain's (See note below), but with a few alterations.

I've pillaged the "realism" section of G.E.M.S as well as a few others not listed from the Nexus. The nexus ones tend to act as accelerators or multipliers to the effects listed resulting in disease being FUCKING LETHAL. As it should be in such a setting.

For combat mods, where Cain suggested not to use X with Y, I'm using X with Y. A guy running at you with a knife is now a serious issue. As it should be. 3 people approaching with axes is a FUCKING PROBLEM. Because you're starving to death and have ultra rabies.

There was a passage of time mod in there as well, can't recall the name offhand but I'm pretty certain it's responsible for nearly killing me when I left the game running for a few minutes and came back to a malnourished, dehydrated guy who's got every disease you can name. Don't hang around in sewers kids.

(edit to fix version, It's basically the requiem list and the survivalism list I'm running, with the few extras.)

Also, dragon mods. Many. All those listed and "World eater beater" which I have no expectation to deal with anytime soon but revamps the final Alduin fight to something a little more interesting and less cheesy. I've also thrown other trap mods in so they're harder to see (if you can't predict likely places after the dozenth tunnel dungeon, you're really not paying attention at all) and pretty lethal.

To give you an idea of my level of progress here, I FUCKING SURVIVED HELGEN. DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT SHIT. FUCK. MAN. HELGEN. YOU WEREN'T THERE MAN. YOU WEREN'T THERE. It took an in-game month to get to Riften and everything on the way is fucking evil and made of hate.

Then some smug little fuck wants me to go to SOLITUDE FOR 10 FUCKING GOLD. I GET IT. YOU'RE POOR. BUT FUCK YOU. IT WOULD BE NICER TO ASK ME TO JUST KILL MYSELF NOW.

It's surprisingly enjoyable, you feel like actions have consequences. Even just waiting around has a consequence. You will, eventually, starve to death.

Further details:Using the various enhanced enemies mods, these also appear to have stacked in places. Literally everything is a murderous ball of hate. I've come across one vampire and now consider the dawnguard to clearly have some kind of death wish.

Before any serious attempt at combat, training is probably a good idea. As it should be.

Again, for an idea of progress I'm about 90 days in game and level 3. I've not been particularly trying to push that up, mainly due to the way I suspect enemies will scale in some places utterly ruining my shit. Not resorted to exploits yet but after the sewers I considered it.

Exploration is considerably more significant with this rig and the level of difficulty mitigates the tunnel-dungeon problem somewhat. Places like Blackreach should become far more interesting to play through as a result of this too. But WHY THE FUCK would you go there? Suicidal fucker.

Ah, I think I see the difference here. I try to balance my game. Admittedly, vanilla Skyrim seems to be balanced somewhere around Apprentice level difficulty, and I try to balance it somewhere well above Legendary level difficulty, but there is some balance.

So, for example. Tougher, smarter, unleveled enemies, what do? Well, Duel is pretty balanced, insofar as you get the drop on the enemy, you can beat merry shit out of them and they'll just stagger until they die (conversely, if they regain the advantage, they'll do the same to you). So Duel partly balances out that power discrepancy. What else? Stronger poisons help. So I have a mod for that. Enemy spawns are larger now. Balanced out with a mod which allows traps to be crafted - ambush the enemy, retreat and draw them into an unholy mix of fire runes and explosive dwarven oil. Vampires and dragons are now exceedingly deadly - compensate with enchanted arrows (which do sick amounts of damge, btw) and buffed shouts. Make your follower essential. They'll still fall down when they're out of health, but at least you won't have to spend all your money on hiring mercenaries constantly, and they'll draw aggro from the enemy.

The other thing to remember is that the NPCs are already cheating bastards. Many NPCs get insane bonuses. Check out Kvenel the Tongue in Volunruud, for example. At level 30, he can have 1000 HP and 575 stamina. And he's not that uncommon, a great deal of enemies have HP, stamina and magicka well beyond what their level should allow them, presumably so combat in vanilla Skyrim isn't a complete joke. Only the three overhaul mods (ERSO, SkyRe and Requiem) actually deal with this by reworking the bonuses to be consistent with race and level bonuses. But it does mean that, for example, with Duel installed he will be a lot tougher than he was ever intended to be by vanilla or mod standards, and quite tough for the Dragonborn. I know, I took him on at level 30 with Duel and Revenge of the Enemies installed, and he wrecked my shit. So don't feel bad about balancing the game whatsoever.

WTF is also actually somewhat useful in this respect, as it means you can concentrate on using crafting skills to level your character without fear of gimping your combat skills and getting into a tough fight. So spam potions, enchantment and smithing all day, every day (CCOR makes smithing more difficult and level more slowly. However, activate Jewelcraft in the options and get hold of the transmutate ore spell. I pretty much levelled 20 ranks in smithing from gold jewelry alone. Plus I made so much that my home in Riften is filled with necklaces and rings, just waiting for vendors to have enough money to purchase them). Do gimp work like chopping wood or picking crops and use the money to make Amren teach you his favourite sword and shield technique. Stalk guards to improve your stealth. Hell, you can even install mods where using the training grounds in each hold capital will increase your melee, archery and magic skills, at about 1/3rd the rate of actual combat. I think that would be a legit, immersive install.

And yes, vampires are deadly. Oh god vampires are deadly. Vampires are threat level alpha, just behind dragons. That's almost entirely due to 4 little words: Revenge of the Enemies. RotE doesn't, as far as I can tell, give them any new abilities or massive bonuses in terms of stats. It does, however, alter their combat AI significantly. They'll shift into batform, go invisible and spam drain life far more, and use their ice spells to drain your stamina and slow you down before engaging in melee.

However, some juiced up inferno arrows certainly ruin their day, as does a bow upgraded with the 50% stagger chance. Cast Flame Cloak for melee and go in with a fire enchanted weapon. Use honed silver too, if you have Immersive Weapons/CCOR installed (30% damage bonus, adjustable. I normally put it at 50%, because it's freaking silver). Use a Frenzy rune to turn their thralls against them. When all else fails, run away.

My playthrough is going fairly well. Now at level 27, just joined the Thieves Guild and looking at joining the Dawnguard next. I did the Morthal vampire quest, which was fun. Caught Morvath with his pants down, figuratively speaking, with only a single thrall and a Nightstalker defending him. I was significantly helped by my follower though....I recruited Meresine (http://3dnpc.com/wiki/interesting-npcs/locations/eastmarch/meresine/) from the Immersive NPCs mod, and damn she's a badass. Completely obsessed with fire, but that's hardly a bad thing. Plus the voice acting is pretty good...significantly better than some Skyrim characters I could name.

I've toned down Deadly Dragons, after blood dragons started showing up, and the guard in Riverwood all went on an extended lunch break. They always ambush me while doing my crafting in Riverwood....anyway, I had it set to Expert, but have reduced it since. I might increase it again after getting enhanced crossbows, but not before. I've also moved to the mod-installed Canal Home in Riften, which is pretty awesome. Small, but I can do all my crafting there without blood dragons ambushing me, and I love how organised the layout for storage is (the mod author has labelled areas for ingots, leather, bones and remains, alchemy ingredients, scrolls etc).

I've also temporarily removed Dovakhriid - the Dragon Lords, as they are just insanely difficult at this level. I'm using the equivalent to an ebony bow, upgraded to exquisite, with three ranks in bow damage, with the Deadly Aim stealth perk, with Nordic arrows, and I'm not seeing the health bar move, after multiple hits. So I'm going to wait until I've levelled a bit more, than reinstall them. They are meant to be a high-level challenge, after all. And personally I don't reckon Alduin would consider me worth the waste of his lieutenant's time. I mean, a high dragon would currently wreck my shit, so I'm not that much of a threat.

I also accidentally stumbled upon part of the Following Mercer mod, while exploring in the wilds. Following Mercer allows you to find where cheating bastard Mercer Frey has stashed some of the wealth of the Thieves Guild, once he is exposed and goes on the run. As it turns out, you can also do this before completing the questline. One of Mercer's sources of wealth is a mine north of Shor's Stone, filled to the brim with bandits. I made about 5000 in gold just from looting bandit corpses and gained three levels. There was also a significant quantity of gems, and I'm planning to head back with a pickaxe and lots of spare time, and take every single ore from that place. And there is a lot of valuable ores in there. Frey also has a cabin on top of said mine, filled with even more gems and some potent magical items but it is heavily guarded, by a levelled shade of Mercer Frey armed with his signature weapons. I decided that was a fight for another day.

Still, when you're a thief, it's not about killing. It's about taking the other guy's stuff (which may or may not involve killing him). And I took a bunch of Mercer's stuff while he's still treating me like a novice, who doesn't know one end of a lockpick from the other. That gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. And selling his stolen stuff to his fence is just the icing on the cake.

I'm now doing some prep work for the first major Thieves Guild quest, the Goldenglow estate. Muffle and night-eye spells, check. Shroud of the Gray Fox, acquired. One scroll of Forgive and Forget (removes all bounties), acquired at great expense (well, I had to kill a LOT of bandits to find it). I'm hoping to level so I have perk points to spend in Illusion, to help me along.

If vampires are still getting you down, consider this mod (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52224/?). I'm about to give it a try now - as I recently got wrecked hard by an Ancient Vampire. Even with cave bears helping, which I found odd, as everyone knows cave bears are basically the gravest threat to civilization in Skyrim, and easily capable of taking down a mammoth, giant or dragon on their own.

I played a dead-is-dead Old Orc whose stated purpose was to fight all the fights until something gives him a good death and I had to suspend disbelief on why he wasn't charging at cave bears, because that shit would have ended my game right there.

Ah, I think I see the difference here. I try to balance my game. Admittedly, vanilla Skyrim seems to be balanced somewhere around Apprentice level difficulty, and I try to balance it somewhere well above Legendary level difficulty, but there is some balance.

Yes, indeed. I've gone for fuck all balance with a side of ludicrous nonsense.

Today's example - Bears are hundreds of pounds of fury and spite. These are nothing compared to the compact ball of evil that is the common mudcrab. Pincers that can slash steel like paper and a carapace made from the bones of everything that ever fucked with it before, these crustacean demons are the leading edge of worldwide doom.

I thought I would go mudcrab hunting to slowly teach myself combat. I ended up teaching myself enough healing to nearly gain a level. The disease riddled bleeding out crawl back to safety taught me something quite important. Do not fuck with Mudcrabs.

After this ill advised attempt, I briefly considered going after horkers instead but I doubt that anything that is composed of 80% tusk is going to be any nicer.

I'm still planning the Goldenglow job. I suspect that the best way to handle this will not look like anything I've tried in the past. It may involve some kind of Mudcrab invasion force.

For some reason, I couldn't enter the sewer on Goldenglow or kill the merc and take his key, like the game hadn't properly registered I was now a member of the Thieves Guild or something. So I had to console-advance the quest to completion.

Did some Dawnguard work on the side as well. Since I have an enhanced ebony crossbow now, I did the first quest to recruit Serana. Was doing really well right up until the point where there is a solitary, boss level vampire guarding the door. I used flaming arrows, silver poison (50 damage per sec for 2 seconds, 25% weakness to fire for 30 seconds, -25% melee damage dealt -10% movement speed), struck from stealth and still only took his health down by 10%.

He, on the other hand, could virtually one-shot me with the vampire lord bolt attack (I have 90% cold resistance and 50% fire resistance, but that attack ignores all except straight up magic resistance), and kept on resurrecting a killer cave bear with about 90% of his hitpoints. If I had been doing an Ironman playthrough...well, it would've ended long before there anyway, but it definitely would've ended there.

I'm going to try Serana with this mod (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49465/?), and see how that works out. Mod maker says he uses Duel and Revenge of the Enemies and this mod makes her more useful, so we'll see.

Had dragons stop attacking me for a while, and kept finding dragon walls abandoned or populated by different levelled enemies, like Necromancers. I think it was something to do with a Knife in the Dark quest, which does temporarily halt all dragon attacks, but I temporarily disabled Deadly Dragons anyway.

The fight at the end of that quest was fun. The resurrected dragon summoned three of his buddies to join in...and as you may recall, that area is fairly exposed. A friendly giant and mammoths drew some aggro for a bit, but it was a tense fight. Since then, I've had dragons attack me in Riverwood and Winterhold, so I think the game is back to normal.

Also, someone has finally come up with a fix for the stalking dragons bug (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54274/?). For some reason, Dragon Combat Overhaul really exacerbates this vanilla bug and Apollodown has been going crazy trying to figure it out. Hopefully, this fix will get rolled into the next edition of DCO and not require a seperate mod.

Oh, Saarthal is fun, by the way. Three draugr deathlords and a draugr wight make for a good fight.

If you have Insects Begone and chose to get rid of all spiders (like I did) and you chose to install Skyrim Immersive Creatures (like I did) but you forget to set the option to "Lore Friendly - No spiders", you end up getting swarmed by thousands of minature bears. Like, bears the size of small rats, rampaging around and roaring and attacking you.

If you have Insects Begone and chose to get rid of all spiders (like I did) and you chose to install Skyrim Immersive Creatures (like I did) but you forget to set the option to "Lore Friendly - No spiders", you end up getting swarmed by thousands of minature bears. Like, bears the size of small rats, rampaging around and roaring and attacking you.

I don't think they were actually hard to kill, this was Helgen and a single hit with an iron dagger was doing the job. But I was laughing too much to pay a lot of attention.

In other news, dragon priests are hard with Revenge of the Enemies installed. Magebreaker arrows will do them in, with Power Shot - Quick Shot and a legendary Zephyr (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Zephyr) equipped...but it's not a fun fight.

That's a huge list of talent, right there. T3nd0 made SkyRe, which is of course awesome. Apollodown is responsible for making dragons scary and the civil war like an actual war. I've played Mike Hancho's Helgen Reborn mod, and I was impressed with the attention to detail, voice-acting, consistency and storyline. Eckss, Lifestorock, Missjennabee and Ironman5000 are also names I recognise, from some very well made mods.

Apparently, the aim with this mod is to make something that is DLC-worthy...and possibly so good that Bethesda are forced to make it part of the official lore (maybe).

That will be interesting to see. Hopefully it'll be pretty universally compatible.

Seems time to finally talk about the mods we're not talking about though:http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/12350/?

Quote

Back in March you might remember a news post written by myself titled Be Careful: Trojans masquerading as popular executables. To cut a long story short, a user was uploading a malicious file to the site that, when installed, would enable the user to find out your Nexus username and password, which was then in turn used to log in to other user's accounts with the stolen login information and continue to upload the same virus to the sites.

Today we were alerted to a malicious change to SkyUI, one of the most popular files on the Nexus network, at around about 12.30pm GMT. Within 20 minutes the file was removed and we got to work investigating how the file was added and who removed the original SkyUI file and replaced it with a malicious executable (thank you to those people who reported the file and were clever enough not to install it!).

As a distribution method, the only thing that surprises me is that it isn't more widespread. Then the thought occured that there are various other mod hosting sites (I'm pretty sure you know which one I'm referring to in particular here) that would probably be the perfect distribution method for all kinds of malware hidden as "Bouncier breast TGGSOMMWFTBBQ".

Yeah, thankfully the modding community is, by and large, a very good bunch of people (despite the disturbing "Jessica Alba in breastplate" enthusiasts - thank god the Infinity Engine didn't support such depravity, back when I helped make mods) and tend to look out for each other.

As for "Awake: The Rise of Mannimarco", the authors intend to make it as compatible as possible. T3nd0 says it will definitely be SkyRe compatible, and they're hoping to talk with Arizoth (who makes all the Requiem patches) so all versions can be released at the same time.

So far, so fun. Playing a Dunmer, going for a rogue/assassin build, which is apparently a very hard way to play in Reqieum, as opposed to vanilla. Combat is exceedingly deadly - I can drop a soldier or stormcloak (which I believe are classed as a mid-tier enemy) in 2-3 hits, with no perks and little skill in one-handed weapons...but they can drop me in a single hit. Bows would be deadly, given iron arrows hit for 84 damage with one perk in archery, but the limited range of the lower-tier bows is cramping my attempted rampage of sniping destruction. Easy to get exhausted in combat too, and so disarmed. Not happened so far, but I know it will.

No doubt a Bosmer would be more deadly for this attempted playstyle, but Dunmer are IMHO better, for reasons of having the single most badass culture in Tamriel. Also allows for the option of specialising in Destruction and Illusion later with less effort than the Bosmer would take.

Everything is insanely expensive, too. I think it now costs 5000 gold to hire a mercenary, which seems about right, but is well out of my early-game price range. Merchants are taking the piss, too...I don't think I've gotten more than 35 gold for anything...and I've been trying to sell bear pelts, enchanted robes and flawless amethysts. 200 gold for carriages to any hold capital, and 50 gold for a night in an inn. Probably about 500 gold for a decent leather curiass...not that I've seen one yet.

Poison is fun...with no alchemy perks, you can make a poison that hits for 40 extra damage right out of Helgen. Poison effects are also fun...my character ate the alchemy ingredient from one of the frostbite spiders, to find out what effect it had. Well, in addition to doing some significant damage when combined with spider eggs, it also makes you see double. It was actually kinda hilarious, bumbling around unable to see anything properly. Thank God I waited until Riverwood to attempt the amateur alchemy. I also need some more frostbite poison...that stuff hits seriously hard. 2 points of damage per second for 60 seconds, and two seconds of paralysis. I believe you need some kind of alchemical book to know how to extract it properly though, and I do not have that book as of yet. Not to mention I'll have to kill frostbite spiders to get it, which won't be fun, as no doubt their poison spit is equally deadly.

There's been some decent placement of items and immersion so far. Justifying the existence of the spiders in Helgen was a nice touch, as was hiding certain books (Bestiary of Skyrim and Armorer's Basic Guide), gold pouches and keys in the keep.

Now it's prep time. Apparently, doing the Dragonstone quest before level 10 and without a large quantity of silver weapons is akin to suicide, so I know what I have to do. Get money for decent equipment, clear out every bandit camp within reach of Whiterun and get enough money to purchase Jenassa's loyalty. Not necessarily in that order. I suspect I'm going to be chopping a hell of a lot of wood for the next few days...

This is a port of iNeed's spoilage system adjusted to dynamically track the degradation state of weapons and armor in your inventory. Items in the world may also be found in various degradation states throughout your travels. Upon first installation you must remove then add all equipment back into your inventory. You can adjust degradation rates and other options if SkyUI is installed. Daedric/Aedric artifacts are not affected by degradation.

I'm already using the ineed spoilage system with no obvious woes so I expect this to add in nicely.

Progress has been limited as I've not played much, but there has been progress. Not classy, dignified progress, but progress.

I reckon you should use Requiem as the base game, and add these things in. Lots of people use Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases with it, and the base game is hard enough that adding in Revenge of the Enemies, High Level Enemies, Duel, ACE Realistic Fighting etc in addition to weapon and armor degredation would make the world almost instantly lethal.

I mean, I just tried the Embershard Mines. I hit a bandit with three steel arrows, from stealth, and his healthbar only went down by 10%. And then he hit my character so hard he ragdolled nearly halfway back up the entry tunnel to the mine.

Oh, and I had a follower backing me up (heavy armor, steel two handed weapon).

SkyRe would also be somewhat lethal, as it distributes the perks quite efficiently to enemies, but SkyRe's fighting system is actually very well balanced. I know I didn't have problems until I came up against yari-wielding draugr, and even then when using timed blocks effectively the threat was not so great. In contrast, I get wrecked by lone wolves in Requiem. One snuck up behind me on the way to the mine, and completely wrecked my shit. Despite having acquired a full suit of leather armor, a crossbow and a steel sword.

How odd. I was literally look at that on the nexus yesterday. Probably been pulled for some reason or other.

Just to make some progress, I'll probably drop the difficulty a touch. There's realism and then there's "You could have actually acquired a reasonable degree of personal skill in (game activity) instead of gaming". I'll be saving beforehand though, this feels like something that should eventually be accomplished if only for reasons of spite.

How odd. I was literally look at that on the nexus yesterday. Probably been pulled for some reason or other.

Just to make some progress, I'll probably drop the difficulty a touch. There's realism and then there's "You could have actually acquired a reasonable degree of personal skill in (game activity) instead of gaming". I'll be saving beforehand though, this feels like something that should eventually be accomplished if only for reasons of spite.

Generic method for losing and recovering your gear. Bandit are more interested in taking your money than your life. Bandit also have a good eye for valuable and those items are more likely to be stolen. All Item can be recovered one way or another, or you can decide to discard them. The only thing that is lost for good is gold and gold paid to recover items. This offers a new, much needed, gold sink in the game.When defeated, the PC is typically left for dead in the vicinity, or thrown out of the current location. There are also a variety of random "Radiant" events that can occur. Adventurer will sometimes stumble on the unconscious PC and offer assistance. The downside is: Bandit will sometimes stumble on the unconscious PC as well, and offer to relieve you of your hard earned loot! A list of all the encounter is provided under the Readme Tab.Player in werewolf or vampire lord form will revert to their human form if their HP reaches zero. This introduces an element of danger in beast form, since your attacker is now a witness to your shapeshifting abilities.

Has the benefit of making combat marginally less deadly with fairly serious long term consequences.

Ah yes, I've heard good things about that one, and similar mods. Another one has you die, bandits steal your stuff, and you wake up in the wilderness with almost nothing. You can then track the bandits down and kill them. Yet another causes you to lose a dragon soul as an alternative to dying.

...both of which I see are noted in the recommended similar mod section of that mod description. Ah well.

DFB Random Encounters continues to be fun. Got ambushed by 2 Morag Tong assassins inside Breezehome (which I purchased only to see the Breezehome Fully Upgradeable mod in action. Verdict: pretty awesome, if you like Breezehome. However, my preferred modded homes are the Riften Canal Thief home (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53541/?) and Vetrheim (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50067/?). Both have everything you need, are much smaller and beautifully designed).

I don't see any obvious conflicts...that I know of, anyway. Did you sort the load order with BOSS or LOOT and clean all the plugins with TES5Edit?

Uhm, no?I don't even know what BOSS or LOOT is, I'll look it up next time i play.I only just found out what MCM is and activated some of the mods i thought weren't working, that should have solved the ones that weren't working right :PTES5Edit, another thing to look up.I did check for DLC requirements, and disabled the parts that do.

Hunterborn is great fun in combination with Realistic Needs and Diseases, looting animals becomes quite a bit more immersive.I've added SkyTEST-RealisticAnimals&Predators. It gives the wild animals ecological roles.

On the road to Whiterun I spotted 3 wolves hunting and killing a hare. I heard that wolves usually don't attack humans when they stay at the proper distance, they merely growl at you giving you about 8 seconds to leave. This time was different though, the wolves were protecting a fresh kill. Three wolves is a bit much for a recently escaped convict with almost no gear so I run away. I didn't notice that the rock I tried to hide behind was a bear until I almost stepped on it's cub. Understandably, the bear was a bit upset. The bear didn't react fast enough to hurt me, but it did attack the wolves that were following me. Terrified of the angry mother Bear, I quickly left for the tundra to the north-west. There I quickly spotted a herd of Elk. Thinking that herbivores are better prey than wolves or bears the decision to kill one was easy and I was getting quite hungry. Something needed to die so I could live. It turns out that Elk don't like it when you set one of their herd on fire. With all my mana spent I have this Elk headbutting me and doing quite a lot of damage. Using my sword and half of my healing potion supply I manage to kill the Elk. Finally alone and with a fresh kill begging to be butchered I start cutting off all the useful bits. The 30 Venison steaks make me the happiest and from one of the large bones I carve a talisman giving me the blessing of Hircine. I have no tinderbox so can't start a fire to cook this meat so I eat it raw. Not the best decision I ever made, now my sight is blurry and I stumble and fall over all the time.I can see a giant's camp nearby so I try to steal from his treasure chest, hoping against all hope that it contains a cure disease potion. I did manage to rob the chest without a problem but there was no potion in sight. Oh well, time to stumble back to Whiterun and get cured. "Oh would you look at that!" there is a Sabretooth Tiger corpse just a bit closer to the giant. Sneakily I pick it up but now I'm carrying too much and that Giant is looking straight at me. I back away and luckily he leaves me alone. I quickly drop the Tiger and start butchering it. Wow! This thing gives 100 pieces of meat! Wait, now I really can't run anymore. Oh well, time to ditch most of it and head back to Whiterun, it's not worth the effort of dragging all this with me. Stumbling and falling I get 100 yards closer but then I fall over into a little stream and get killed by some Mudcrabs before I can get up.

Good luck figuring out which one, I'd guess one with minimal info/documentation but I Cain's already covered the best fix.

You may want to try a couple of different weight fix mods, trying to recall the one that worked well with hunterborn.

Just passing level 12 of the setup i'm coming to think of as "living hell". No significant accomplishments to report beyond crossing the map. Twice. For a pittance. Not occuring again in the near future. Based out of Markarth currently raiding Forsworn camps because fuck the Forsworn. I've had to go back to heavy armour/2h sword to survive. Which is incidentally the style I ended up using for Goldenglow. They weren't impressed with my subtle approach. We're still cool though.

Good luck figuring out which one, I'd guess one with minimal info/documentation but I Cain's already covered the best fix.

You may want to try a couple of different weight fix mods, trying to recall the one that worked well with hunterborn.

Just passing level 12 of the setup i'm coming to think of as "living hell". No significant accomplishments to report beyond crossing the map. Twice. For a pittance. Not occuring again in the near future. Based out of Markarth currently raiding Forsworn camps because fuck the Forsworn. I've had to go back to heavy armour/2h sword to survive. Which is incidentally the style I ended up using for Goldenglow. They weren't impressed with my subtle approach. We're still cool though.

Heh, I'm NOT using your setup. Too depressing :P

I'll try Cain's fixes.So far the CtDs only happened twice, on melee kills. One Elk, and one Bandit. Now I know it is not Hunterborn because that only deals with animals.

It is neither weather or one of the other minor aesthetic changes so it is either RealisticNeedsandDiseases (unlikely) or one of the ACE mods regarding combat.Unless one of the mods has a serious flaw and influences something it shouldn't.DLC related requirements could be an option if the slain creature spawns loot that isn't. (in existence)

This modding thing is a lot more entertaining than i expected!Thanks guys, for putting me onto this trail.

It also may not be mod related. Are you using the alpha build 1.7 for SKSE? If not, you may need to investigate how to allocate more V-RAM to Skyrim, as the update for Skyrim 1.9 basically borked how memory is allocated towards the game. If it exceeds a certain limit....you crash to desktop. 1.7 has this functionality built in, so it's not a problem.

BOSS and LOOT are programs which, when run, will tell you what order to put your mods in, what dependencies those mods have (and if they are present or not) and whether those mods have "dirty edits" which require cleaning. TES5Edit is a program which allows you to clean the mods. Neither BOSS or LOOT is perfect, but they are frequently very helpful.

Also, I echo your feelings about Hunterborn. It is a great mod. It's even better when combined with RND and Frostfall, and either played with the SkyRe overhaul (which has a new perk tree - Wayfarer - which deals with survivalism and is awesome) or with Requiem, as the mod author recommends.

The only problem with Hunterborn is that it's not entirely compatible with some other major hunting overhaul mods. Notably, it has problems with SkyTEST when it comes to looting...as I recall, it's not a CTD level problem, but more to do with the kind of loot you get. That info is contained in the compatability information though (the author is very good at that), so it's easy enough to find. The other problem is that it can be, at times, rather script intensive, which can slow down your system. This is a notable issue when it is combined with Frostfall.

Hmmm, now I think about it...does ACE Archery, Melee and Realistic Fighting play nice with Hunterborn? Probably not, I've not seen anything about a compatability patch or anything. Even if you're not using Scrimshaw arrows and weapons, they may not be recognised by the ACE system, and so could be fouling things up. Just a possibility, but one to keep in mind. If that is the case, I suggest perhaps using SkyRe as a combat overhaul - it's just as valid, and probably a little more coherent overall, and you know for sure that it has SkyRe compatability.

Also, seriously Junk, try Requiem. I know I've said this before, but it will make your hardcore playthrough even more hardcore. For extra fun, install Requiem - Hard Times, the Dragonborn Patch and use Alternate Start to start the game in Raven's Rock.

You. Will. Die.

Seriously though, Requiem plus even a few mods can be extremely deadly. I would go with Frostfall/RND/Hunterborn, for your survivalism needs. Then I would install Hard Times. Then YouHunger. Then Dragon Combat Overhaul and Revenge of the Enemies. Add patches and whatnot. Add whatever fancy balanced weapon and armour mods you like (Immersive Armors and Weapons have patches to ensure they work with the game, and look pretty sweet besides). Add pretty textures, if you like. Install Enhanced Lights and FX. Install Climates of Tamriel and select the darknest night option. Install Alternate Life.

Select "left for dead".

Try to survive. You wont, unless you get really lucky, but have fun in the meantime.

Well, in the case of Alternate Start's "left for dead"* option, what happens is that you are literally left for dead. You wake up somewhere in the wilderness, in miner's gear, with no supplies, no gold, no weapons.

With hypothermia and realistic needs mods, this is frequently deadly. With Requiem it is doubly so, as it's an unlevelled world, where running and jumping have actual stamina costs, enemies are frequently much higher level than you and everything costs thousands of septims to buy. Oh, and no fast travel.

You will learn to despise frostbite spiders. A single hit from their venom can bring your health down by 40 points or more...in addition to blurring your vision, effectively making fighting impossible and your death a certainty. Bleak Falls Barrow is no longer a starter quest, but a major undertaking...draugr are resistant to most weapons, impervious to arrows (except silver) and can Shout. Oh, and there are lots of them. BFB is suggested as a level 10 quest, which, in vanilla Skyrim terms, is like a level 30 quest. And dragons...now dragons really are the end of the world, capable of engaging multiple soliders without breaking a sweat.

Archery is much less powerful, except against unarmoured targets. Light armor now emphasizes the "light" part...meaning you'll die in 2-3 hits while wearing it, instead of just one without it. Heavy armor emphasizes the "heavy"...meaning lighter opponents will be able to dance away from you and launch hit-and-run attacks, or else employ deadly magics from range. Each attack costs stamina, and if you get exhausted, you get disarmed and killed. Stealth is also nerfed, so expect less spectacular sneak attacks...especially against targets without vital organs. Stamina also affects spellcasting, as does armor. No more running around summoning daedra in your fancy ebony armor (not without a LOT of perks, anyway).

Oh, and vampire bosses are typically level 80, and decked out in ebony armor AND fire resistance enchantments. They're blood-sucking fiends, not morons.

As such, Dawnbreaker is now about the best single sword in the game. But good luck trying to get to it...

Requiem is actually my favourite game overhaul. I did like SkyRe quite a bit, but it's basically a perk and combat overhaul. Requiem is much, much more, though the combat itself is harsh and unforgiving. It's meant to be a roleplaying overhaul and does quite well at that task, given the limitations of the Skyrim engine. It's much closer to Baldur's Gate and Morrowind than Oblivion, lets put it that way.

*there are other options. Starting with a guild isn't a terrible start, especially with Requiem's improved RPG atmosphere.

My personal best Requiem moment was fairly early on in my quest as well. I decided to roll a Redguard swordmaster, arriving per ship at Solitude (using Alternate Start). Stupid idea, since the north is a lot colder than the south and I have Frostfall installed. After barely clinging on to dear life in the wilderness surrounding Solitude, doing quests, crafting my own tent and stuff, I run into some bandits near a wrecked ship. I sprint, zig-zag, towards the archer - cleave his bow and wreck his face before he can draw a melee. Thank god the heavy is stuck behind a rock, because the guy with the greatsword is now swinging at my neck. I take a glancing hit (thank you, Blocking I) and impale him.

I start circling the guy stuck behind the rock. Tried an arrow, but heavy armor doesn't give a shit. Dude's got a shield and an Orcish dagger, too. He gets loose afer blocking my first blow, and a mad battle of circling, blocking, shield bashing and hacking starts. Near the end, we're both within one good blow from death and I'm all out of potions and stamina.

I swing, he blocks, he swings, I block - I get disarmed. I don't even realize it because I'm already trying to swing again. Punched the sucker right in his face. He goes down on one knee while I'm still staring at the raised fists, wondering where my weapon went. I see it lying on the floor, think: "Oh yeah. You can get disarmed. Neat, I guess." Pick it up, shove it through his neck.

Felt like a right baller.

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So my sneaky Bosmer archer explored Shroud Hearth Barrow today and engaged Requiem's walking dead for the first time (she's been to Bleak Falls but gave up on it for the time being after narrowly surviving the giant spider), thinking herself well-equipped at level 16 with 120 silver arrows in her quiver, a silver katana and her friend Gorr watching her back. It was really, really scary, with ELFX making everything so dark that I needed a torch in many places while at the same time often hesitating to light one for fear of being spotted, Sounds of Skyrim creeping me out with its weird draugr cries in the most (in)appropriate moments, and knowing that I was dead if they ever got close to me (managed to kill a few weak ones in melee though by blocking and bashing with a torch). In one narrow place with one of those accursed swingdoor traps I died about ten times, either to the trap or the draugr behind it, until I found out how to draw them into the trap without getting smashed myself. Got past a deathlord archer (not named thus in Requiem, but you still know them by the horns) by peeping around the door, shooting an arrow at him to get his attention and letting him trigger a blade trap, enjoyed listening to him getting cut into slices. The final fight in that big chamber with the many tombs went well enough until Gorr went down and the endboss came for me. I had run out of stamina potions by then, so in my despair I gulped a bottle of skooma and, suddenly feeling invincible, cut him to pieces; it was well worth the side effects (which TBH weren't as terrible as I'd expected, but I suppose the stamina regen penalty could be devastating under the wrong circumstances; anyway, I adore what you've done with skooma!. Scariest and most satisfying dungeon crawl in a long time.

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I'm not too sure how 'exciting' this is, but I am curious to how other players dealt with this...

So the character I am playing right now is a Dark Elf spellsword named Vedas Fadrale. His primary skills are Light Armor, One-Handed, Enchant, Destruction and a bit into Archery.

After hitting level 18 I decided I want to try some of the Dawnguard content, so I spoke to Isren for the first time. This time however, after learning how dangerous vampires are in Pinemoon Cave (a small vampire lair near Solitude, to the west, I think) I decided to make some new armor... I used an Elven Gilded Cuirass I picked off of a Thalmor agent and gave it a Rigidity II enchantment, which buffed my health and claimed to make me 'immune to most magic draining effects'.

This was probably the most prudent decision I made (outside of enchanting an elven longsword with fire, I suppose), because I was basically able to torch all of the vampires in Dimhollow Crypt rather easily, while they helplessly tried to drain my life. Mind you, their attacks were still very dangerous (and I died a few times, especially to the mage vampires) but was able to clear the cave pretty easily. That is, of course, I got to Lokil.

This is where the 'epic' goes downhill, as I quickly realized engaging him in a fair fight was out of the question. His powerful lightning bolt spell and frost cloak was almost an instant kill for me, but luckily I found a way of beating him. By closing the gate to the room you start in, I was able to dual-cast fire rune outside of the barred windows and slowly widdle down his health... When he got around 20% of his health bar I decided to leave (since he automatically follows you to the next room) and finish him off with Lydia, in a semi-fair fight. Hilariously, he still almost killed me (I think I only had like 20 hp left after the ordeal) but we beat him down. Now Lydia has a full suit of Ebony Armor and I have a near full suit of Glass Armor from his vampire cohort. (which disappointingly only has a 10 point AC lead on Elven Gilded gear, I think it needs a bit of a buff)

So how did you guys beat Lokil? I think he's supposed to be like level 100, has a full suit of enchanted ebony armor and lots of mean spells. If anyone's beaten him legitly (without a cheesy strategy, I mean) I'd like to hear the story.

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I needed some quicksilver ore and moonstone to create soulgems, so I decided to take Lydia with me. Now I'm not really a great fan of followers, in fact I hate them, but the last time I took one with me is at least a year ago, so I have forgotten why. This was a simple ore retrieving mission however, so what could possibly go wrong?

I left Whiterun and headed north to Silent Moons Camp and soon realized I was missing something: Lydia's footsteps. I looked around but she was nowhere to be found. Thinking that perhaps she missed the gate somehow, I decided to go back. At that moment I saw her in the distance running towards me. She had taken the long road passed Pelagia's Farm instead of just climbing the stairs, jump over a 30cm brick wall and heading north. Apparently, heavy armor and brick walls don't go well together, or she decided to have some exercise. All those days in Breezehome doing nothing did grow a couple of pounds after all.

Reunited, we collected the moonstone and went east to the quicksilver vanes. It was there we met our first challenge, a sabre cat. We saw each at the same moment, but the cat couldn't decide whether to go for Lydia, fat like an elk in summer, but armored like a mudcrab, or me, a skinny wizard, but easy on the teeth. That gave me time to put a Fire Rune on the ground before me and poke the cat in the face with Fiery Arrow. The cat took the bolt surprisingly hard and started running towards me. I readied a Frightening Orb and released it the moment the sabre cat run through the rune. I saw a bright orange flash and heard "Unghh". The cat run away and I thought by myself, I have never heard cats making that sound before. Then I saw Lydia, on the ground, at the very precise spot of my Fire Rune, dead.

I used my powers to travel back in time and tried a new approach. No more Fire Runes anymore, but simple fire bolts and and then scaring it away. I unleashed my first bolts, prepared a Frightening Orb, aimed and ... missed! The moment I released the orb I was pushed in the back by Lydia, which shove me a meter forwards, just enough to miss the cat. The cat didn't miss me however and had a good meal. Lucky for me I already had cast a contingency spell that put me back in time...

Third attempt. This time I positioned Lydia a couple of meters away from me and beside me. Lured the cat again, prepared an Frightening Orb, released it and ... hit Lydia, who managed with great skill and accuracy to jump in the trajectory of the orb at the precise moment I released it. Lucky for me, she also hindered the cat long enough to give me time to hit the cat with a second orb. While Lydia took cover behind a rock, I started pelting the sabre cat with more Fiery Arrows. I already begun to enjoy the exercise, temporarily without a follower, when Lydia shook off her fears and, feeling she had to compensate for her previous ... mishaps, she drew her sword and started chasing the cat.

Now, if you ever had the joy of seeing a sabre cat running, and then start imagining a Nord the size of a big fat (Breezehome) wild boar, clad in heavy armor, you can very accurately estimate the chance Lydia had catching the cat this way. She did however make enough noise to aggro three wolves and a troll, and irritated a giant in the process by just running through his camp.

After a long and tedious fight involving bolts and orbs to save Lydia's life, we collected the quicksilver ore and went home. On the way back, passing Whitewatch Tower, a small group of bandits were attacking the guards. By the time we were able to help, all bandits except one, were already taken care for. The last one had climbed the stairs to the tower, cowering in fear. I released a fire bolt, to put an end to his misery. Again, Lydia performed a miracle by wrangling her belly between me and the banisters (while still in heavy armor), and catch the bolt before it could reach the bandit. What a speed, what an agility! When asking her how she was able to perform such a great act, she simply replied "I'm sworn to carry your burns".

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Since my last post i'm now level 20, but most of that has been non-combat grinding. I have many unused perks due to level restrictions in the areas I wish to strengthen and my character is still fairly weak. Anyway, i'm still hanging around the Whiterun area, with the occasional visit to Riften to work on my pickpocketing etc. I'm given the 'Valtheim Towers' quest and correct me if i'm wrong, but in Vanilla (I haven't played it for a while) it's just a case of taking out 3 or 4 bandits and job done. Although i'm weak, I think my character can take it and I head off.

This is where it kicks off. I approach Valtheim Towers and suddenly, the combat music kicks in and I receive a message telling me that my objective is complete and the Bandit Leader has been killed, despite me not even drawing a weapon. Obviously, this caused a bit of a 'wtf' moment, but I wasn't going to turn back and collect my reward just yet, I came here to slay bandits and i'll be damned if I was going to anything but that. I continue my approach... and get more than I bargained for.

I can see on the bridge that there are two NPC's in combat. I couldn't work out what they were but assumed they were both bandits. I had the OBIS mod installed (amongst others) and assumed it was at work? I hadn't noticed it up until this point, and had the spawn mutliplier set to 4 ignorantly assuming it wasn't working. I have so many unfamiliar mods installed I don't really know what's what just yet.

Anyway, I proceed into the lower tower by sneaking. There are three unarmed bandits there awaiting me. I manage to put arrows in two, step back a little and take the final one with my sword. Is this it? Easy. Lets get to the top tower and see what goodies are on offer. I proceed, and take out the surviving bandit on the bridge with another arrow. Again, easy.

I proceed towards the upper tower, and then it happens. I can hear all sorts of NPC's grunting, swords, battling, even a little FPS drop (F5, F5, F5!). Up the stairs I go... carnage! Bodies everywhere, about 4 or 5 bandits alive, unarmored, light armored, heavy armored. I die, obviously.

Load game, lets try and work out what's going on. I go up, I die. After many, many tries, I conclude that as soon as I go up those steps and take a look, they are on me. I need a new plan. This time, I go up the steps, don't even take the time to look, I just turn back and sprint. As I get back to the bridge, I stop, look behind me, did they follow? Of course they did. A group of bandits run after me. I manage to shoot an unarmored one with an arrow, but the rest - no good. More death... but a plan was forming. Eventually my tactic develops into 'take the unarmored with arrow, then run again!' Due to my level I at least had an abundunce of stamina, despite the lack of perks.

I sprint out of the tower. Stamina all but gone but i've built up enough of gap to get a safe quicksave in. Three more bandits come running out after me. The closest is unarmored... happy days. One arrow takes him down. The second, light armored, and I have time to hit him with an another arrow then finish him with my sword. Then... death at the hands of the heavy armored guy. It was a problem I need to solve due to my poor quicksave timing, but after trying with the same tactic for quite a while, I managed to get the first two killed in time to just about to avoid the swing of the final enemy sword. I switch to my mace and a battle commences, in which I win by the skin of my teeth. "That was the last bandit, it must be!" I heal up, save my game and off to get my goodies I go!

I walk into the lower tower, up the stairs, onto the bridge. Combat music hits... and so does an arrow. "FFS!" Load game. I go back up, a little more expectant this time. "Lets try and find out what's going on before I get hit, shall we?" Then I see it on the bridge. Another bandit, glowing to shit and back, armored with God knows what, firing arrows at me. Apparently, it's a Bandit reaver (upon more research it turns out it's from Dragonborn, but as I never played it during Vanilla, this was my first encounter). Am I fucked? Of course I am. I die... a lot more. On that bridge, the arrows were going to hit me everytime, I had nowhere to go and wasn't even going to get close.

10000th attempt. I try sprinting across the bridge. If I can get to him before he gets a shot at me, I can take him out, easy. "It works!", I thought. I make it to him without a single arrow in me. He pulls out a knife, I pull out a mace. "Haha, the guys as good as dead", I think. I barely scratch him... he in turn knifes me to death... Never the less, i'm having fun, so i'll keep trying.

Try upon try, I then somehow sprint towards him and pass him. I'm then making my way upto the top tower, completely unaware of where he is at this point. Either way, my natural reaction... quicksave. SINGLE HANDEDLY THE WORST QUICKSAVE I HAVE EVER MADE. He's on me like a sack of shit, every load... I'm fucked. My last proper save was back in Whiterun, I have wasted the last hour or so. A few tries later, and frustration that I may have lost my efforts I run as soon as my game loads... off the tower I go, onto the cliffside, into the river. I'm free!!! He's up there... i'm down here. I swim to the other side to safety. There is no chance in hell he can disobey Skyrim's rules and copy what I did to follow me. To get to me he must travel through the entire tower.

That's it, I'm done here. Back to Whiterun I must go to collect my reward, and i'll never be going to Valtheim Towers ever again. On my way back, it comes... my lifeline... my one chance to defeat him while i'm still here. As I make my way back, I see a travelling merchant accompanied by heavy armored brutes. Any other time my thoughts would be 'can I take them on, steal their gear?' Not this time, my thoughts right now were 'please be travelling past Valtheim Towers'. I walk with them, slowly. Painfully slow in fact, but I stick with it. There's a junction on the right, if they pass that, then they must be heading towards Valtheim Towers? Sure enough, they pass it. This is the moment.

As we approach, I quicksave then go on ahead. The difficulty was going to be getting him to follow me (he didn't follow last time after all). I get onto the bridge, combat music hits, arrows are fired, but I run back down the stairs unharmed, back to my new merchant friend. The bodyguards are armed ready. The plan was working, and what I loved most about it was that it worked first time!

Sure enough, he runs out of the tower, the bodyguards run towards him and my decision now was to either get involved or to let them battle it out. Hell to that, this guy has given me grief for the last hour or so, I want to kill him! I run up behind as he is in combat and hit him a few times with my mace. He goes down as if I were fighting an elk. I've done it... I've beaten him!

The merchant and his men are on their way. I decide i'll let them live (as if I would have beaten them anyway). Now I can finally enter the top tower and see what's going on. Up there, I find the reason for all the commotion, and the reason my FPS dropped. Whiterun guards and bandit bodies surround tower floor... what the hell happened? How did it happen? Either way, it's not my concern, my job was done and I had plenty of good loot to get that is probably way above my level, but I felt I deserved it for the way I dealt with the whole 'battle'. What should have been a simple quest took a near 2 hours of my time in all, and I loved every bit of it. Only Requiem (and whatever other mods that were having an affect) caused this. It was great.

Oh, and the great irony of it all? There was a bandit note at the top of the tower that stated that all merchants that pass by should be killed and looted... As soon as I read it I saved and quit, as I thought the story must be posted here.

Azirok's patches (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/users/4464223/?tb=mods&pUp=1) should give you a good idea of what works with Requiem. Not a whole lot, to be honest...but because it's such a huge game overhaul, not a lot needs to.

Also the Requiem reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimrequiem/) (check the topics on the sidebar) and Nexus page (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281/?) have a lot of useful resources. The STEP project can give you useful hints on how to install it best, and what to install with it. Guide 1 (http://wiki.step-project.com/Pack:Requiem) and Guide 2 (http://wiki.step-project.com/Pack:Requiem_Extended).

I'm also working on reworking my Requiem modlist, so I'll let you know what I've done.

If you want to break your final game in finishing it up, I strongly suggest Draugrnok, by the author of Hunterborn. It brings the zombie apocalypse to Skyrim, by unleashing the Draugr from their tombs to accost the living.

It starts slowly, the occasional attack at the city gates and on isolated settlements. But then, the numbers grow...and grow, and grow, until legions of Draugr Deathlords are assaulting major cities like Whiterun. If you're playing with an overhaul that makes undead more difficult (RotE, SkyRe to an extent, definitely Requiem), then this is basically a world-ending event.

You will have to flee to the wilds to survive...where you will probably get killed by a cave bear.

The only one from there that is entirely unnecessary is Vetrheim (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50067/?) along with General Displays. Because I intend to play a Dunmer nightblade, I included Vetrheim as a themed home for my character. That said, I do like Elianora's work, so I recommend looking through her posted mods and seeing if there is anything you find suitable.

In other news, I just made Giants and Mammoths storm Whiterun. Turns out they really don't like people shooting at them...and that the Open Cities mod is a bad idea when you forget to close the gates behind you.

Seems to have installed without a hitch. Still gotta patch, but given this is less complex than SkyRe, I don't see any major problems arising.

Also looked over the documentation. While I'm still not allowed to discuss it in full detail or spoiler perks...well, if you liked SkyRe you'll probably like this. It's definitely less specialised when it comes to weapons, which will help compatability a great deal, as one of the major problems with SkyRe was that it didn't necessarily recognise weapons from other mods as belonging to a particular skill tree and so the perks did not benefit it.

Wayfarer has made a welcome return as well, so survivalism gameplay is still supported. Not sure how that interacts with Frostfall etc but some of the other beta testers are going to try that out.

I was initially intending to play a Dunmer Nightblade, but after looking over the docs I'm more interested in trying a no-magic using rogue - archery, poisons and daggers all the way.

Note: since my laptop is slowly, but surely, dying, it is not having a good time recording gameplay. When I do end up getting a new computer, if I get the one I want (I'm waiting a month to see if there will be any sales offers, due to students returning to University), I might start doing it again, as it will be significantly more capable.

In the meantime, I'll be using this journal both to entertain, and to aid myself in roleplaying my character in Skyrim: Requiem (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281/?), now I have a mostly stable load order which is not overburdening my increasingly incapable computer. Requiem is intended to be a roleplaying overhaul, but since roleplaying in vanilla Skyrim is completely worthless and unrewarding, I tended to end up powergaming, which is not ideal.

It'll be a simple job, they said. Just some luxury items unfairly taxed by Imperial officials in order to help fund the war effort, they said. A quick hop across the border, drop the goods off in Falkreath and be back in Bruma before the week is out. The fighting is all in the north anyway, around Eastmarch and the Pale.

So naturally, by the time I've managed to pick the lock and discover I'm not carrying triple-distilled Cyrodiilic brandy, but actually skooma, I'm already over the border. And then I get hit by an Imperial Legion ambush which apparently came out of nowhere. Just my luck I happened to cross the border in roughly the same area the leader of the rebellion, Ulfric Stormcloak, was travelling, along with his entirely too small retinue of soldiers.

And then, just to top things off, the Legion decides that it's not taking any chances with anyone, and that everyone's up for the chopping block. Yes, even poor, misunderstood and duped skooma smugglers. I thought this Empire was built on free trade and commerce? Unfortunately, the captain I tried to explain this to did not entirely agree with my interpretation of the Empire's rise to power, and may have also broken some ribs in explaining her alternate point of view.

I suppose that was a bit embarassing. I did some time in the Legion, scout company, and can usually guess where you're likely to come across a patrol and so avoid it. It's a useful skill in this line of work. But it seems the Stormcloaks have been putting the hurt on the Legion some, and so they're trying out some new ideas. I can't entirely say I approve of this dangerous capacity for independent thought they're suddenly developing.

So after my, ahem, discussion with the Captain, we were duly thrown on carts and taken to Helgen, where an Imperial garrison with exceedingly sharp axes was waiting for us. And then, get this...a dragon attacks the town.

Now I'll admit, I may have been wishing a dragon might eat that bitch of a captain whole. Maybe. Just a little bit. But I am fairly sure that, unlike that incident in Chorrol with the fire salts and troll fat in a pressurised container, I was not to blame for this. Not that I wasn't going to take advantage of the situation, oh no. I made for the nearest non-flammable building as fast as my legs could carry me.

Things got a bit...confused after that. Lots of fire, smoke and running. I somehow ended up beside one of the soldiers who captured me crossing the border. Hodor, or something. Anyway, I convinced him that since I was probably going to die anyway, he might as well let me aid in the defence of the city. Not that I had any intention of attacking the giant, fire-breathing, flying lizard. But some Imperial armour and weapons certainly wouldn't hurt, once I actually got away from this death trap of a town.

Besides, it was either that or team up with the Nords. And I'm not so sure that Ulfric and his merry band of Nordic supremacists would necessarily welcome a representative of the hated Cyrodiilic Empire, even if that representative was just about to lose her head to the same Empire's own legion. Plus I'm not entirely sure that their plan of enforcing the supremacy of white-skinned, mostly blonde and blue-eyed humans is necessarily the sort of program which can have positive outcomes.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we managed to escape the town, though Hagrid did keep on stopping to try and convince the Stormcloaks we should work together to fight the dragon. This worked about as well as expected...especially on the giant spiders and cave bear in the caves below the dungeon. Good thing the Empire still makes good steel. A pair of parrying daggers and a crossbow may not be the most destructive forces in Mundus, but they'll do for now.

With Hadvar(?), I managed to limp my way into the charming-if-unoriginally named village of Riverwood, picking up a small variety of alchemical goods on the way down. If there was one thing I learnt as a scout, it was how to live off the land and the various properties of various plants, fungi and similar. At the very least, I may be able to brew something to get drunk. That sounds really quite appealing right now...

Well, I certainly feel stiff this morning. All this running around and screaming and dying is clearly unhealthy.

And now I also have to deal with the uncomfortable fact I am on the wrong side of the border. The Legion confiscated Horsey, my trusty steed, who no doubt made an appetizing snack for that dragon. Which means I am now trapped. In Skyrim. Surrounded by smelly barbarians, who all walk around wearing exceedingly ugly heavy armour, belching and drinking mead and challenging everyone who comes along their path to fistfights. And singing. While a civil war is raging.

Oh Eight Divines. I think I've ended up in some special kind of hell.

First stop was to what passes for a merchant in this podunk village. Turns out he recently got cleaned out by some bandits or something, but I made do with the little gold he had, depositing the surplus arms I had acquired on my way out of Helgen. Not that I could carry much...damn Nords, and their preference for iron armour and clunky two-handed weapons. I also had a chance to look a bit more closely at a little surprise I had stumbled across in my escape from Helgen. A curiously dark and heavy dagger...I can't be sure, as I've never seen any in person before, but I think this may be ebony. Very foolish, leaving that lying around where anyone can just take it. Well, I'll keep that sheathed but closeby...I don't want it drawing undue attention, but at the same time, I'd rather rely on it than a steel sword, should I need to defend myself.

The merchant also mentioned something about a reward for retrieving his stuff from the bandits. Which sounded vaguely interesting until he mentioned they were in Bleak Falls Barrow. That ancient, giant, snow-bound temple looking place in the mountains to the west of Riverwood. The ones Hadvar told me were crawling with draugr, which are apparently some kind of Nord undead.

Now don't get me wrong. I like abandoned temples as much as the next girl. They're usually full of interesting antiquities, and decent amounts of unused gold, just begging to be spent. But undead...and bandits...chances are the bandits ran inside to escape a snow-storm, and were butchered by the nonliving inhabitants. And yeah, I'm not exactly keen on any plan which involves taking things from unnatural monstrosities. So I've passed on that.

Asking around, it turns out the local inn has some alchemical equipment, which allowed me to convert a lot of yesterday's more...unusual pickings into an easy source of income. I'll have to wait a couple of more days to dump the whole lot off on Lucan, as he promises he should have more septims by then. And as that pretty much took up my morning, I decided to check out the local area.

The wildlife of Skyrim is about as charming as its human inhabitants. Good thing I brought a shield along, as it allowed me to guard my flank, put my back to the river and fend off a very angry and hungry small pack of wolves. After that, I decided perhaps south of the town was not the best pickings for alchemical ingredients anyway. I actually wanted some snowberries, so I decided a quick trip up the path east of town could hardly end in disaster.

But no. This is Skyrim, of course. While minding my own business, picking snowberries and enjoying the fresh air and sensation of not fighting for my life, I stumbled across a pair of bandits.

Now, understand, I am not normally inclined to violence. Discretion is the better part of valour, and all that. As a scout, my job was either to find the enemy position and report back, or find routes allowing our troops to avoid enemies. While in theory I was a soldier, I did not fight. I walked through exceedingly nasty weather, got drunk a lot and mostly avoided lifting my blade in anger. The same as a smuggler.

But in the last day I've been beaten, threatened with execution, nearly set on fire multiple times, attacked by a variety of soldiers, giant fricking spiders, bears and wolves. And so, when I see some foul-mouthed bandit shouting obscenities and banging on his shield I may have gotten a little...angry. And put an arrow between his eyes. His friend didn't like that much, and tried to charge at me, but I scrabbled down the path and drew my dagger. As he rushed around the corner, I smashed him with my shield and stuck him with the blade a few times.

That said, this may have actually been worth my time. Firstly, because no-one likes bandits. Not even other bandits like bandits. Jarls and Lords and guards tend to like them even less. So killing them isn't exactly against the law. Furthermore, bandits by their nature, tend to hoard gold and precious items. Going through their camp I found some slim pickings but at this stage, every little helps. Plus, they were carrying some not insigificant weapons either. This dagger, for example, appears to be of Altmer design, and is definitely sharper than my steel one, if not as good as the ebony. And this mace...I'm not even sure what it is. Dwemer? There's meant to be Dwemer ruins in Skyrim, or so I've read. And the first bandit I killed had some very nice scale armour which survived unscathed, because I hit him in the head. Sure, now I look like a bandit myself, but it's of a better quality than the Imperial leathers I had been wearing.

Anyway, I think that's enough work for today. I have a plan, which involves drinking all the available alcohol in Alvor and Sigrid's house.

Yeah, BFB wont be for a while. I have exactly 1 silver arrow. I actually know there is a silver weapon in BFB itself, but it took 4 reloads to take those two bandits down. Once I can clear the Embershard Mines with relative ease, I may be ready for the barrow.

True, but if you'd also seen the gameplay, then you'd see all the clever little in-jokes I'll be putting in.

As an aside, when I do get the new computer, I will do a full install with as many gameplay and graphical improvement mods as I can manage, including the full Requiem survival experience (hypothermia, dying of thirst/starvation, lack of sleep, realistic hunting) and see how far I get.

It won't be an ironman playthrough, because Requiem is the kinda overhaul where you die in the opening stages of the game, which is actually impossible in vanilla. No joke, I got taken out three times by a dragon, just running to Helgen Keep.

I'm starting to notice a pattern here with wolves and any kind of overgrown off-road area. On the plus side, I now have even more ingredients for poi-uh, utterly innocuous alchemical mixtures which in no way will instantly kill someone when applied to a blade or arrow.

So, today I decided to make my way to Whiterun, the Hold capital. Alvor, the blacksmith was quite insistent that with a murderous black dragon flying around, Riverwood was, not to put to fine a point on it, fucked. And he's quite right. I mean, they have some walls, but as far as I can see the only person around the village with any viable combat experience is Faendal, and if a dragon happens to attack while he's off stalking the merchant's sister, Camilla Valerius, as he seems wont to do, then everyone is gonna die.

I mean, everyone will probably die anyway. I doubt that dinky hunter's bow he is using is going to cut it against a giant, heavily armoured lizard. But he might just distract the dragon long enough for everyone else to jump in the river.

Where mudcrabs will probably kill them. Those mudcrabs can be pretty vicious.

So, I took the path north to Whiterun, narrowly avoiding an Imperial patrol with prisoner in tow. According to Alvor, Whiterun Hold is neutral in the civil war, but apparently the Legion didn't get that memo. Anyway, I followed the patrol at a safe distance, so any more wolves would have to fight them instead of me. Alas, no more appeared, so I made do with current stash and strolled into town.

And it is an actual town. With all that passes for Nord civilization, such as a tavern, and a shop, and an alchemist. And some sort of sweetroll based crime-wave, going by what the guards had to say. And depressingly high prices, a sure sign that you've found yourself in a city. You would not believe what they're charging here for a room, or hiring a carriage. It's got to be at least 10 times what it would cost back in Cyrodiil. Simply scandalous.

After the Jarl's Dunmer Housecarl very nearly threatened to attack me, I gave the Jarl a...somewhat edited version of events in Helgen which did not include yours truly in chains. And in return, he gave me a gem. Which I sold for an abysmally low price because, well, Skyrim. And then the Jarl introduced me to his "court wizard", a curiously arrogant and monotone individual by the name of Farengar. Yet another individual who wants me to go delving into this Bleak Falls Barrow place...although, I will say in defence of Lucan and Camilla, they didn't sneer down their nose at me while asking me to do this.

Don't you worry Farenger, I've got some poison of arcane disjunction with your name on it. And, once applied, we're going to sit down and have a little chat about that "your betters" crack. Oh yes.

At least the local alchemist has proven useful, when not diagnosing me with everything from ataxia to corprus. I offloaded quite a few potions on her, and she seems to have plenty more money to spend.

So, everyone seems intent on sending me to this Barrow place. I guess I should probably do it, since if I don't the Jarl will probably do something horrible to me and hang my corpse as incentive to the next fool he and his pet wizard rope into their schemes. But I'm going to do it on my terms. I need people who know something about undead. Based on my scant knowledge, silver and fire are always useful but the problem is

a) I have no silver, andb) I'm not a mage

I could chop wood for fifty months straight, and by then I'd probably have the money to purchase a silver weapon, but by then half of Skyrim may well have burnt down. I have three possible leads I'm considering:

1) Markarth has a silver mine, which is apparently hiring. Plus side: Markarth is apaprently built in the shell of an old Dwemer city and so, unlike Whiterun, Riverwood or probably most of the rest of Skyrim, not flammable in case of dragon attack. Downside: apparently a big bandit problem, Breton tribes or something...carrying silver out of the borders will make me a target.

2) Winterhold. Has a Mage's college. I did some contract work for the College of Whispers, back in Cyrodiil, "acquiring" unusual alchemical ingredients and similar, no doubt the College of Winterhold is similar. Downside: mages are insane. Every last one of them. Also, it's at the very arse-end of Skyrim away from here. In a frozen, desolate waste.

3) Riften. Apparently lots of work, for anyone willing to get their hands dirty. And since I haven't washed in almost a week, I think I qualify. On the downside, lots of ways for other people who don't mind getting their hands dirty to profit off your hard work.

I think I may stick around here for a short while, maybe get some supplies to keep my weapons and armour in decent condition, upgrade my iron arrows for steel ones and see if there is any easy work available. Also a horse, to replace poor, cruelly eaten Horsey. Yes, that would be a good idea.

Well...I should be getting my new computer in the next couple of days, so I've kinda been not playing it at all.

Markarth is especially fucked up, it may be the single most fucked up city in Skyrim. Any city that is more corrupt than Riften, more unstable than, well, Riften and is home to both Molag Bal and Namira cultists is not exactly a place you'd want to live. That said, a lot of the good quests there are higher level, under Requiem's rules. Anything daedric is basically level 20+, at least for a first time player, or so I've been led to believe. Cihdha Mine I don't know for sure about...but I would suspect a mine filled with dangerous bandits and Forsworn would be at least level 10.

On the other had, the Forsworn do go down easier than most bandits, due to their exclusively light armor. The trick is not to let them get into melee range, as that's where they would be deadly, what with the dual-wielding. But with Briar-Heart or Hargraven support, they'd probably push my shit in.

I've not faced a mage in combat yet...but I've heard stories about people who went to Fellglow Keep at too low a level. Admittedly, the Invisible Entities likely played a role in their dismemberment and utter obliteration...but I have also read about how high level destruction-focused mages can pretty much two-shot a dragon. A Requiem buffed dragon, no less.

I have heard the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests are mostly pretty doable at low level, apart from the DB contract on that vampire. Not to mention you can get a daedric artifact fairly easily in the TG questline, if you ignore the fact you first have to complete Snow Veil Sanctum to do so (daedric weapon = 50% armour penetration, straight out the gate. Useful, in a game where heavy armour makes you nearly invincible...if slow as fuck). I mean, maybe you could let Mercer tank for you, but I have no idea how tough he is in Requiem. And if you can finish the questline, you of course get a daedric bow, which is perfect for taking down dragons. The only problem is, of course, getting through Irknthgard...

Also, the DB are scrubs and losers with no fashion sense. Any assassin with a lick of self-respect joins the Dawnguard, and kills disguised vampires instead. Much more sporting...not to mention profitable. Kinda a high level character's game, though, killing vamps.

I was considering knocking over some of the smaller bandit camps directly outside Whiterun, the Northern Watchtower, the ones camped around the north-west of the city walls and then doing some basic training with mudcrabs. And then after that, maybe Riften then Markarth.

But with the new computer coming, I've kinda lost my desire to progress until I can get a new install going.

I'm looking at, in addition to the Frostfall/Realistic Needs/Hunterborn trilogy of possibly making Skyrim a lot more populated - both Interesting NPCs (a great mod) and Inconsequential NPCs have Requiem patches. The latter adds a lot more, IMO, in terms of an underworld economy to Skyrim - ladies of the night, skooma dealers, more mercenaries, bodyguards for Maven Blackbriar* freelance fences and similar. And if I'm going to roleplay as a thief, well, I need a Skyrim that reflects the less lawful side of things. Also, I can pickpocket a lot more people then.

*and damn does that woman need them. Like the mod author says "Maven is basically the 'Under-Jarl' of Riften. She walks around the city flaunting her stature and bullies everyone she sees. Every time I talk to her, I just want to bash her head in...With this mod, she has a personal bodyguard who follows her everywhere and intimidates anyone who is more annoyed than intimidated by her". Given Requiem removes the essential status from most NPCs, I am fairly sure I can kill her once the TG and Civil War quests are done with. And hell, I probably will.

It was included in purpose by the Requiem designers - but you have to look pretty hard for it. If you look around Helgen Keep, you can also find a copy of "A Skyrim Bestiary" which explains, in lore-friendly terms, the changes they've made to certain enemies, "The Craftsman's Manual" which, along with a perk in smithing, allows you to undertake iron, leather and steel smithing, a vial of Frostbite Spider Venom (very deadly due to Requiem's changes) and a couple of bags of gold hidden in odd corners.

I also acquired an Orcish greatsword from one of the Stormcloaks. Which would've been great...had my character not been a thief. And a crossbow, which was nice, because out of the gate a crossbow hits for something like 120 damage, and takes less stamina to fire than a bow. With perks and steel bolts, the damage goes up on quite a nice curve. I'm not sure if they have innate armour penetration though...would need to consult the documentation. I think they do, but I'm not sure.

Markarth is especially fucked up, it may be the single most fucked up city in Skyrim. Any city that is more corrupt than Riften, more unstable than, well, Riften and is home to both Molag Bal and Namira cultists is not exactly a place you'd want to live. That said, a lot of the good quests there are higher level, under Requiem's rules. Anything daedric is basically level 20+, at least for a first time player, or so I've been led to believe. Cihdha Mine I don't know for sure about...but I would suspect a mine filled with dangerous bandits and Forsworn would be at least level 10

I've been thinking through some of the quest arcs and the following would probably be quite good for this:

Any Daedric quest (Namira, Molag Bal and Sheogorath in particular)Mages guild - Hopefully it's been altered somewhat so it's not quite as obvious who's got an agenda.Cidha mine - You know why. Main quest - First ascent to greybeards / Paarthunax stuff - Just getting there should be entertaining. I've managed one small mountain and that nearly killed me multiple times. Bards college - "Go where? For what? Couldn't you just make another one?"

I know for a fact that the Molag Bal quest is hard. I mean, doesn't it seem odd to you? Vigilants normally travel in pairs, yet there is only one investigating the possibility that one of the most powerful and scary of the daedric princes (I mean, he's called "The Lord of Rape") has a foothold in the city? Could it be that Vigilant Tyranus doesn't need back up, because he's that scary on his own?

Admittedly, I only know this because someone mentioned in passing how he has some of the best armour in the game, and others have mentioned his fight is difficult.

Altering actual questlines is pretty much impossible. They're hardcoded into Skyrim's system. All Requiem can do is add flavour text (in terms of letters, notes etc) and abilities which would be consummate with what you would expect in a deleveled world.

So for the Mages Guild, nothing changes in terms of plot. But the difficulty arc is much higher. Saarthal is very hard because it is a draugr infested ruin. You need fire, sun damage and turn undead spells to complete it...and to rely heavily on Tolfdir's assistance. Labyrinthian is, as you'd expect, pretty nightmarish.

Obviously, the main quest is quite tricky, since you have to be able to complete BFB and then Dragon Rising to activate it. Getting to the Greybeards probably wont be easy, with Frostfall installed, though you might be able to afford a horse by that stage. And dragons are pretty hard to kill in Requiem...especially with Dragon Combat Overhaul installed. Oh, and you need to get that Elder Scroll, don't you? Mzulft is suitably harder now, I believe. Dwemer automatons are very difficult to kill, as they're heavily armoured and, in some cases, quite fast.

Ah. Didn't know the plot was coded in like that, which is something of an annoyance. The quality of writing does vary quite a bit and the "Spot the bad guy" thing with the Mages guild was one that was particularly painful. It's even more jarring when you've just come from something quite well written and involved like the truce negotiations. Again, another that will be quite interesting to read, eventually.

Yeah, if you've played Civil War Overhaul, you'll know just how buggy quest overhauls can be. And that's restoring a mostly complete vanilla questline. It still crashes your game a good 25% of the time, requires you to start a new character and usually requires a decent amount of debugging to complete.

OK, my monitor probably wont be arriving for another week, give or take. This is annoying as hell, but it does give me some time to consider what mods I want to include. Since I'll be doing the video for you guys as much as my own entertainment, I thought I'd get some feedback.

Realistic Needs and Diseases? I've watched some videos, and it seems less annoying/time consuming than I initially thought. But would you guys necessarily welcome the ever-potential possibility of my character starving to death and having to sleep every 18 hours or so?

Hunterborn? It's mostly compatible, but as skinning takes time, it can interact badly with RnD and Frostfall (ie; you starve and freeze while prepping the carcass). I could disable the time penalties and rely on it mostly as an alchemy overhaul....thoughts?

Hard Times? The Azirok patch makes the economy of Skyrim even more brutal. But since we're going to be playing a thief anyway, it doesn't seem like that is really an issue. It just means stealing is even more worthwhile than before.

The Dragonborn patch? Requiem doesn't officially cover the Dragonborn DLC...not yet anyway, and probably not until at least 2.0 (for reference, 1.8 is likely to be released in the next few days). Also, some people have reported that the patch made by Azirok puts the difficulty level somewhere up in the "insane" region, and adds an entirely new plot to the DLC, revolving around the usage of cursed Daedric armour to defeat Miraak. At the very least, it's a level 50+ area.

Character wise, I'm looking at specializing in stealth (obviously), somewhat into archery and one-handed, favouring archery more, pickpocket, lockpicking, light armour, alchemy and illusion. Quest wise, I'll be looking at the Thieves Guild, the Mages Guild (for Illusion and access to their library), the Imperials for the Civil War and the Dawnguard for that DLC, along with random dungeon delving in search of riches. Also no save-scumming on thievery, aside from actual quest jobs. So if I get caught, I'll do the time.

OK, my monitor probably wont be arriving for another week, give or take. This is annoying as hell, but it does give me some time to consider what mods I want to include. Since I'll be doing the video for you guys as much as my own entertainment, I thought I'd get some feedback.

Realistic Needs and Diseases? I've watched some videos, and it seems less annoying/time consuming than I initially thought. But would you guys necessarily welcome the ever-potential possibility of my character starving to death and having to sleep every 18 hours or so?

Hunterborn? It's mostly compatible, but as skinning takes time, it can interact badly with RnD and Frostfall (ie; you starve and freeze while prepping the carcass). I could disable the time penalties and rely on it mostly as an alchemy overhaul....thoughts?

Hard Times? The Azirok patch makes the economy of Skyrim even more brutal. But since we're going to be playing a thief anyway, it doesn't seem like that is really an issue. It just means stealing is even more worthwhile than before.

The Dragonborn patch? Requiem doesn't officially cover the Dragonborn DLC...not yet anyway, and probably not until at least 2.0 (for reference, 1.8 is likely to be released in the next few days). Also, some people have reported that the patch made by Azirok puts the difficulty level somewhere up in the "insane" region, and adds an entirely new plot to the DLC, revolving around the usage of cursed Daedric armour to defeat Miraak. At the very least, it's a level 50+ area.

Character wise, I'm looking at specializing in stealth (obviously), somewhat into archery and one-handed, favouring archery more, pickpocket, lockpicking, light armour, alchemy and illusion. Quest wise, I'll be looking at the Thieves Guild, the Mages Guild (for Illusion and access to their library), the Imperials for the Civil War and the Dawnguard for that DLC, along with random dungeon delving in search of riches. Also no save-scumming on thievery, aside from actual quest jobs. So if I get caught, I'll do the time.

Realistic Needs and Diseases sounds good.

Hunterborn is pointless without the time penalties, for me at least it was the time penalties that made it immersive.

Normally I would agree, and for my own gaming purposes I wouldn't let it affect me.

However, I'm thinking it wouldn't be much fun to watch my character kill a wolf, spend all day skinning it and harvesting its ingredients, then eat and drink something and go to sleep, because that's the day gone. And if I were playing Skyrim with a more wildnerness survival focus that could also fit, but I mostly wanted it for the immersive content, the improvements it makes to Frostfall, and for the alchemy upgrades.

question... Are you going to be doing a live steam of you playing, or recording yourself and uploading to the internets?

Reason i ask is because if you're uploading, people can just skip chunks they don't want to watch, so it's not really a big deal.

Live steam, otoh, everyone would have to watch you spend a whole day skinning a deer, but that isn't really too much different from watching you wander back and forth through town all day, trying to buy all the salt and mead you can and then carrying it back to make venison chops for your next adventure, right?

Can I suggest the Prisoners mod(name escapes me). Mainly because I think it would be amusing to see bandits rob you blind when your stealth fucks up.

I'd also second hard times and realistic needs/diseases, adds a lot more interest to standard gameplay.

Hunterborn I'd say is fairly optional, maybe show it off once and then drop it from the setup? Everything else I'd prefer you've either already got in or would just make for an unpleasant game and viewing. I'm probably alone in wanting mudcrab encounters to be the things songs are written about.

Big mudcrabs in Requiem are scary. I've seen them take down heavy armoured two-handers before. Also slaughterfish. I've heard they get...big. Like, mammoth sized. One of them has one of the few pieces of daedric armour in the game.

Also, it seems Hard Times' documentation has vanished, which makes me wary about using it at the moment.

Requiem 1.8 should be dropping this week...the new update makes spellcasting while in armour slightly less costly (the mass effect system was a bit over the top), but also gives bandits and guards proper weapon perks. It turns out that "all guards derive from the generic civil war soldier, as such they need to master both armor types and all three weapon types, despite the fact that imperial guards only use one type of armor, one sword and one bow in Vanilla. As a consequence they are severely underskilled for their levels and often would not naturally qualify for the high-skill perks."

So now, if a guard or a soldier or a bandit has a weapon, they probably know how to use it. Meaning the game just got even more deadly.

I'm not keen on any kind of "captured if you fail" mods. The fact is, you are going to be killed. A lot. And the early-game economy in Requiem is sufficiently bad that any capture would probably lead to economic ruin, especially as the respawn rate is low enough that you cannot simply "farm" bandits like in Vanilla.

It does have a distressing tendency to break games, but Apollo assures me the new version is more stable than ever, unless I try and switch sides during Season Unending, in which case I'm possibly screwed.

Previously, I've found it fails about 25% of the time, but it does make the civil war so much better. Or would we prefer a guaranteed, if boring, civil war experience?

The Civil War Overhaul has explicitly been patched for...in fact, without the patch it is too easy, as otherwise enemies are not assigned the correct levels and perks and so get utterly crushed. The only problem is occasionally you get endlessly spawning enemies, or enemies who are massively beyond your level, or your orders never get updated or similar. One time, I had an invincible party of dragons gatecrash the Siege of Whiterun and the only way to get them to go away was to leave...which counted as desertion, meaning the Stormcloaks took the town (sad day).

The main problem is processing power...CWO is very script heavy in places, and it remains to be seen that my new computer can handle a bunch of HD mods, Requiem scripts, Frostfall scripts, Hunterborn scripts, Dragon Combat Overhaul scripts and CWO scripts on top of that. I'm fairly sure at least some of my personal experiences with it have been due to script lag, simply because my poor laptop cannot keep up.

But maybe the new computer can. Once the screen arrives and I get everything installed, I'll be doing some stress testing.

OK, so I have to ask this...am I the only person who was completely underwhelmed by Falskaar?

Yeah yeah yeah, new landmass, dungeons, questline, over 100 new NPCs, thousands of hours of work, blah blah blah. I wont deny, the guy clearly put a lot of effort into it.

But the storyline is so lacking, even by Skyrim's dire standards. The geography is clearly designed to add difficulty, rather than realism. And it's nowhere near lore-friendly. It's like your Skyrim character was dropped down into an alternate universe somewhere, which I find jarring as fuck.

I much prefer Wyrmstooth. A few unfinished elements aside (those fucking ingots), you have a fun questline (recruiting the mercs is enjoyable), a fairly sensible if not spectacular plot, and it's much more lore-friendly.

OK, so I have to ask this...am I the only person who was completely underwhelmed by Falskaar?

Yeah yeah yeah, new landmass, dungeons, questline, over 100 new NPCs, thousands of hours of work, blah blah blah. I wont deny, the guy clearly put a lot of effort into it.

But the storyline is so lacking, even by Skyrim's dire standards. The geography is clearly designed to add difficulty, rather than realism. And it's nowhere near lore-friendly. It's like your Skyrim character was dropped down into an alternate universe somewhere, which I find jarring as fuck.

I much prefer Wyrmstooth. A few unfinished elements aside (those fucking ingots), you have a fun questline (recruiting the mercs is enjoyable), a fairly sensible if not spectacular plot, and it's much more lore-friendly.

I have not played it, but from what you are saying I won't even bother.Skyrim is already immersion-deficient, it can't stand to lose more.

OK, so I have to ask this...am I the only person who was completely underwhelmed by Falskaar?

Yeah yeah yeah, new landmass, dungeons, questline, over 100 new NPCs, thousands of hours of work, blah blah blah. I wont deny, the guy clearly put a lot of effort into it.

But the storyline is so lacking, even by Skyrim's dire standards. The geography is clearly designed to add difficulty, rather than realism. And it's nowhere near lore-friendly. It's like your Skyrim character was dropped down into an alternate universe somewhere, which I find jarring as fuck.

I much prefer Wyrmstooth. A few unfinished elements aside (those fucking ingots), you have a fun questline (recruiting the mercs is enjoyable), a fairly sensible if not spectacular plot, and it's much more lore-friendly.

Falskaar was diverting, but your critisisms are certaintly valid. Mine are on the same lines really, ropey plot, pain the the arse landscape, etc etc. It ended up being like that "moonpath to somewhere" mod which again, had a lot of potential but it needed more people involved who were willing to say "this is fucking dumb" instead of "Yeah, and THIS too".

Wrymstooth was better put together in many ways, including the (almost annoyingly sensible) plot. Unfortunately when I tried it it was a quite buggy and various map areas just crashed everything. I'm guessing that's been fixed(or was a conflict with another mod) but it certaintly did take the shine of it.

I did try the "Vvardenfell recreated" kind of mods, of which I could only get 1 actually running and even then I wasn't actually able to get to the new landmass so while I'd quite like to suggest one of those, I can't really.

Credit where it's due though, mods of this kind of size and standard really are labours of love. Yeah there's bugs and many things are far from perfect but judge it on the size of the development team. Frequently, it's one guy, or a very small team. It would be great to see companies recruit top modders to their talent pools but that's far too sensible an idea to be taken seriously in the games industry.

I haven't tried the Moonpath to Elseweyr. It looks interesting, but even by the authors own admission it is not really finished or fully fleshed out. That, and giant fucking spiders, made me lose interest, despite normally being up for thrashing the Thalmor regardless of location, affiliation or setting.

Wyrmstooth's plot was very sensible. It wasn't outstanding, but it all cohered nicely, made sense and stayed close to the lore. It was competent, in other words.

I believe Skywind is coming out of alpha testing soon...I actually believe they have the entire landscape set up, they just need to actually do the quests. There is also one aiming to build the entire of Tamriel...I believe northern Cyrodiil has been constructed to the extent one can kill bandits and do vendoring there.

OK, you need your mod client. You have two choices, but whatever you choose, you need the Nexus Mod Manager (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/modmanager/). I prefer to also use the Skyrim Mod Organiser (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?), which is a more complex piece of software, but has additional benefits than NMM does not. A guide to how to use it can be found here (http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer).

Firstly, you need to install SKSE (http://skse.silverlock.org/). This is what allows most mods to work in the first place.

Secondly, you need SkyUI (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3863/?). Note SkyUI and Mod Organiser do not always play nice....when launching the game via MO, you need to go to the Archives tab and deselect the option "Have MO manage archives".

After that, you need the Unofficial Skyrim and DLC patches, available here (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19/?) (scroll down for the DLC links).

After that, you want A Quality World Map With Roads (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/4929/?).

That's what I would consider a basic mod install. Everything should work properly, you now have a nice interface, and the map is now much more awesome and useful.

After those, I would also have

Clothing and Clutter Fixes (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43053/?)Weapon and Armour Fixes (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34093/?). I recommend the Complete Plus version, which has changes to Orcish and Daedric weapons, Dragon Masks and arrow and bolt speed, in addition to the bugfixes.Complete Crafting Overhaul Remade (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49791/?). Please note a patch is required to make this work with WAF, but is included under the download list.

This will make a number of changes to the crafting system, as well as restoring Orcish weapons to a more proper category (better than Elven or Dwemer, worse than Ebony). If you like playing mages, this will allow you to wear circlets with hoods, which also works with the Nightingale and Shrouded Armours.

Run for Your Lives (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23906/?) and When Vampires Attack (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28235/?) should prevent NPCs dying due to dragon or vampire raids.

Dragon Combat Overhaul (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32597/?). Unlike the Civil War Overhaul, this baby is stable as hell. And while it does utilise scripts, my laptop handles them without issue. It also instantly makes dragon fights 50 times more epic. DCO makes dragons act more unpredictably in combat, making them a lot harder to kill. No changes to damage or health are made, so this mod can be freely combined with Deadly Dragons (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3829/?), which does make dragons tougher, but does not change their behaviour. For that one, keep Assault Mode switched off or mark cities as exempt, as dragons spawned via that assault mode will not make citizens run inside even with Run For Your Lives installed.

Also DCO has the single best mod description on the entire of Nexus. I do recommend tweaking the settings to drastically reduce the chance of reinforcements however. Having five dragons show up to every single fight can sometimes cause script lag...and more importantly, it's annoying as fuck. Except that that one time, when they did it during my very first fight at the Whiterun Tower and slaughtered all the guard, making that battle at least 500 times more epic than was ever intended. Dunmer supremacy was asserted that day, let me assure you.

Cutting Room Floor (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/47327/?) restores content that never made the final cut into Skyrim. Exception: Boethiah's Bidding, which would have had the Dragonborn assassinate Jarl Elisif for the Daedric Prince has not been included due to the complexity of restoring Civil War related plotlines, though I believe Apollodown is interested in restoring it at some point for his own Civil War Overhaul mod.

Extended Encounters (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50376/?). Just for fun. I often run into Companions in the Reach or Rift, and Jenassa does a surprising amount of mercenary work.

Immersive Armors (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19733/?) and Immersive Weaponry (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27644/?). Personally, I uncheck some of the armours (all the mage armours except Ebony, because they look goofy, and Glacial Crystal).

VioLense (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56980/?). Because more epic kill moves, more often, are never a bad thing.

And a follower overhaul mod never hurts. UFO (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/14037/?) is probably the best known, but AFT (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15524/?) can also be useful.

And if you want even more potential followers and quests, I strongly suggest Interesting NPCs (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8429/?).

If you want a serious combat challenge, I also suggest:

Duel (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2700/?). Use the hardcore version.Stealth Skills Rebalanced (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2700/?). Alongside Duel, this improves enemy detection to an impressive level. Also, you aint picking that master level lock, or that pocket for that matter, without some serious perk investment now.Revenge of the Enemies (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/40491/?) (if you're feeling very sure of yourself. Includes numerous "boss" fights which makes previously levelled enemies much, much harder.).High Level Enemies (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27866/?). Makes sure certain enemies, notably bandits and Forsworn, do not have an absurdly low level cap.WTF - Random Encounter Zones (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/28761/?). Changes the minimum levels in certain zones, meaning say, for example, nothing in Embershard Mine will be below level 40. Which sucks, if you go there at level 2 expecting an easy fight.

Yeah, no worries. I am something of an old hand at modding though...hell, I was modding Infinity Engine games, back in the day. Admittedly, Skyrim is several scales of complexity more difficult than those were (and, frustratingly, I've still not figured out the Creation Kit to my satisfaction) but, on the plus side, there are a lot of good people out there who will help get you a stable setup.

In your modlist, I linked to STEP. They're well worth following, their install guides, though a lot of what they offer is designed for higher level computers. Its an active community and they offer step by step guides on how to do massive game overhauls to make Skyrim a more interesting, dangerous and immersive experience.

No problem. And I feel your pain...I'm currently downloading all 11.3 gigs of the game onto the new computer...and for some reason (namely updating Windows) its going at about 110 kb/s. So, 4 days according to Steam.

Well, I was gonna use this weekend to catch up on my writing a bit anyway...

No problem. And I feel your pain...I'm currently downloading all 11.3 gigs of the game onto the new computer...and for some reason (namely updating Windows) its going at about 110 kb/s. So, 4 days according to Steam.

Well, I was gonna use this weekend to catch up on my writing a bit anyway...

1.8 unfortunately doesn't allow for backwards compatability with save games. The mod authors did originally intend for it, but because some of the changes were so far-reaching, especially the NPC changes, it simply wasnt feasible. I also suspect they were keen to roll 1.8 fairly soon, as it had been a while since 1.7.3 was released. If you were using 1.7.3, I recommend you keep on doing so unless you are not very attached to your character, as compatability will take a while to sort out.

Plus Requiem has never played very well with other mods anyway. Even if those mods were previous versions of itself.

Cool, I'm glad you're enjoying it. Which modlist exactly is that? I should probably alter a few of those, as I've tried mods and discarded them for disliking them, or discovering some incompatability or another. In particular, that Requiem setup I posted on page 2 doesn't look quite legit....

Yeah, Requiem and Frostfall synergise really well. Requiem makes stamina such a more important stat, and then Frostfall goes and makes it so getting cold puts some significant penalties on your total stamina and stamina regen.

It could be worse though. If you use Alternate Life alongside those two mods, one of your options can be "shipwrecked". Which happens around the coast north of Winterhold.

You can survive this at level 1, with vanilla Requiem and hardcore Frostfall settings. It's just...not very easy.

It's also worth noting Frostfall and Realistic Needs have to be activated in the MCM before taking effect, so they can still be installed, if you prefer.

I do recommend Interesting NPCs as a rule...however, I've discovered that the NPCs from that are set at level 30 and often don't have the correct perks assigned to them. There is an attempt at a community mod for that, but it's going to take some time.

But this should give you a good base Requiem and immersion/survival experience.

Arissa the Wandering Rogue (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53754/?) is fairly good, if you are in the market for a thief-like travelling companion. Recruitment mission is fun, even if you see it coming, and the trust system, which allows you to unlock more commands and functionalities for her is a unique take on companions in Skyrim. Basically, she approves of: sneak attacks, lockpicking, stealthy theft, persuasion topic options. She disapproves of threatening people, needless murder and cannibalism (though strangely she has no opinion on vampirism or werewolves).

Voice-acting is decent (though the volume comes across as just slightly too high in comparison with other NPCs) and her commentary is frequently amusing and more in-depth than vanilla companions, while not being overbearing or in depth as, say, your average Bioware character (which may or may not be a good thing). There is also no DLC commentary as of yet, though I believe it is planned for the future.

She's also useful in more hardcore settings because, as you gain her trust, you can borrow lockpicks and poisons from her. If you play with a mod like Stealth Skills Rebalanced, where picks are almost like gold-dust, this can be useful. Also, she has an unlimited carry capacity, which can be useful if you're not going for a full immersion or survival build, and just want to steal as much stuff as possible.

Alchemy Redone (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/33822) - an extension of vanilla alchemy, unlocking more options and more powerful potions in the late-game stages. I've only looked at it a bit, but it seems balanced and useful. Also because it doesn't alter basic game assets, it is very compatible with other alchemy mods.

Following Mercer (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29946/?) - a very fun quest mod. So, Mercer Frey has been looting the wealth of the Thieves Guild for 25 years. Where did it all go? This mod attempts to answer that. You get five new dungeons (some quite sizeable), filled with traps and enemies to test the wits of any Nightingale, recover the stolen plans of the Thieves Guid and, if that were not incentive enough, a shit-ton of treasure. I was clearing 7000 septims per location just from gold...throw in the jewellry, gems and levelled items and it was probably triple that. Totally throws the economy of Skyrim out the airlock, but if you're not playing a realism/immersion mod, it's worthwhile. Oh, and you also get Mercer's armour, which is much superior to the Guildmaster Armor, and even the Nightingale armor set.

Helgen Reborn (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35841). Worth your time. Like the name suggests, this mod allows you to rebuild Helgen, through a multiple stage quest system. I played version 1.04 which used radiant quests for part of the mod, but I see this has been replaced by handpicked and personally designed dungeons and ruins - which should be good going by the quality of the rest of the mod. There is a minor Civil War Overhaul incompatability, but all you have to do to avoid it is recruit independent guards for Helgen.

All in all, it feels like it should have been part of the game. Helgen is where it all starts...and it's a great way to finish the game, by rebuilding the town and moving into the tower.

Thief player home in Riften Canal (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53541). Best thief home, hands down. Sure, it's small, and it's in the less desirable part of Riften (that's to say, it's in Riften). But it has everything you need. And I do mean everything. All your smithing, alchemy, enchanting needs can be met here, there's a fully functional kitchen, a bed up on the second floor and plenty of named storage. No more chucking everything in a chest at the end of your bed - you have specific places for ingots, animal remains, bows, scrolls etc.

You can also easily access the Ragged Flaggon via the home, and vice-versa. Which saves on endless loading screens and makes vendoring so much easier.

Oh, and there is a secret room. Of course. Inside you'll find an awesome display set for the dragon priest masks and claws, as well as some of the more unique items in the game (including all the thief guild "litany of larceny" quest items), an altar to Nocturnal and a place to keep your ill-gained loot. Definitely an awesome themed home and a must-have for anyone who likes to play as a collector...and isn't terribly fussy about relieving the previous owners of their belongings. I will probably use this one in my Requiem playthrough, but with a few adjustments (the gems will go in the river, the smelting will be done in town).

I've unified three threads, to prevent the proliferation of spaggotry, for the conduct of peaceable public order, and for the sake of decency. I make no apologies for any confusion.

It also means I can use this thread as a clearing house for videos. So, current plans:

Dragon Age 1+2 playthroughs to be abandoned. I basically wont have time to do them both, with player feedback, before Dragon Age: Inquisition comes out. However, I have preordered Inquisition. As a compromise choice, I might let you all vote on Dragon Age Keep settings, thus creating a unique and special snowflake player world without the tedious issue of having to play through it (Dragon Age Keep basically bypasses the need for previous gamesaves to create the correct world settings).

Assuming my internet doesn't get any worse, I'll likely do plenty of multiplayer videos for the game, as well as a blind single player playthrough.

Skyrim: Requiem. Whether it's 1.7.3 or 1.8 depends on how quickly the patches are all updated. I have no preference in that regard, I only wish for a working and stable game. May occasionally break up the monotony with various Skyrim mods, on a more vanilla game.

Dishonoured. I want to complete this. Preferably before the second game comes out (hint: no-one knows when the second game is coming out).

Pillars of Eternity. Because I backed it, and I damn well intend to play it.

That was also an option, but I decided to throw it out there. Just so you know, my "canon" savegame goes:

Human Noble Rogue (dual wielder, Assassin/Duellist/Shadow specializations). Sided with the Circle of Magi in Broken Circle (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Circle). Undid the curse and recruited the Dalish elves in Nature of the Beast (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Nature_of_the_Beast). Sided with Prince Bhelen in A Paragon of Her Kind (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/A_Paragon_of_Her_Kind), killed Branka and destroyed the anvil. Saved Redcliffe by calling upon the Circle of Magi to undo Connor's possession (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Arl_of_Redcliffe). Romanced Leiliana. Recruited all possible allies. Hardened (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Hardened#Alistair) Alistair. Revealed the location of the Sacred Ashes of Andraste (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Urn_of_Sacred_Ashes). Killed Flemeth at Morrigan's request. Duelled and then executed Loghain at the Landsmeet (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Landsmeet). Alistair and Anora will go on to jointly rule Ferelden. Did the "dark ritual (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Morrigan%27s_Ritual)" with Morrigan to avoid dying, and killed the Archdemon myself.

In the DLC, Shale was recruited, Avernus was sided with (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Warden%27s_Keep) and allowed to continue his research (but in a more ethical manner).In Awakening, Amaranthine was sacrificed to the darkspawn horde. The Vigil was fully upgraded and withstood the onslaught of the Mother. The Amaranthine Conspiracy (first iteration) was uncovered and slain. The Architect was slain as too great of a risk to allow loose on the world. In Black Marsh, we sided with Justice over the Baronness. All companions recruited, Nathaniel Howe stayed on in the Wardens.

In Witch Hunt (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/In_Search_of_Morrigan), The Warden said goodbye to Morrigan and allowed her to walk through the Eluvian.

Dragon Age 2. Played a female Hawke (Force Mage/Healer specializations). Everyone was recruited. During the Deep Roads Expedition (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Main_quests_%28Dragon_Age_II%29), Carver was recuited into the Wardens. Earned the respect (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/A_Worthy_Rival) of the Arishok. Romanced Isabella, who returned with the Tome of Koslun (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Demands_of_The_Qun), slew the Arishok in single combat. Sided with the Mages throughout. During The Last Straw (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Straw), allowed Anders to live. All companions bar Sebastian stood by Hawke during the final battle. Feynriel (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Feynriel) was allowed to join the Dalish Elves, was not made Tranquil during Night Terrors, nor possessed. Bartrand was allowed to live (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Family_Matter), and Varric took a shard of the Red Lyrium (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Haunted).

Not sure how I'm going to play my Inquisitor yet. The Warden was an idealist who got much more cynical and pragmatic as the game went on, making alliances with people he knew to be suspect (the Antivan Crows, Bhelen) and involving himself in suspect magic (Avernus, Morrigan) in order to defeat the Blight. Hawke was more diplomatic, more open to compromise...which of course didn't help much in a situation where fanatics on every side eventually took control. She was always sympathetic to mages, but couldn't bring herself to use forbidden magics, and harboured a deep distrust of those who did (including Merrill - got a full rivalry with her).

Maybe my Inquisitor will be a bastard from the very start. Would be different.

I really haven't had much of a chance to experiment with it, sadly. My laptop could handle it, but it felt kinda...sluggish in places.

From what I did play though. my feeling was that it was very much like an Infinity Engine game in terms of combat and exploration. Better animations and more options, of course, but otherwise much the same. It really does feel like an updated version of Icewind Dale or BG2.

I really haven't had much of a chance to experiment with it, sadly. My laptop could handle it, but it felt kinda...sluggish in places.

From what I did play though. my feeling was that it was very much like an Infinity Engine game in terms of combat and exploration. Better animations and more options, of course, but otherwise much the same. It really does feel like an updated version of Icewind Dale or BG2.

Excellent. Will be nice to have something to in that vein to get into again.

Also, I think we were talking about watch dogs a while back, what's your take on this review?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw9cwOcdqs4

(spoiler heavy).

Seems on the money, I forgot it was ubisoft and I could kind of guess the problems ahead as soon as I heard that.

Cant watch at the moment, but current opinion of Watch Dog, based on previously seen gameplay, is that it is a bit boring and mostly overhyped. Easy stealth, uninspired combat mechanics, hacking consists at least in part of mini-games....its OK, but nothing special.

Also, I know you're not a console player, but I'm hearing from people who are some very bad things about Destiny. Most of which I can confirm via watching some footage myself. Don't believe the hype. Borderlands IN SPACE with Peter Dinklage's voice telling you to kill things sounds amazing, on the face of it. It's repetitive, grindy, pretty to look at but utterly uninspired in story, gameplay or progression.

Stress testing proceeds well. I'm doing beta-testing for the Perkus Maxmimus overhaul for Skyrim. With PM and 78 other mods installed (including CWO, Frostfall, RND, Convenient Horses etc) I still maintain 60 FPS during the opening stages of the game.

Oh, I've also done some ini file edits, following the instructions from the STEP:Core setup (though I found using an ENBoost was giving me CTDs). At most I'm getting a 2 FPS hit during some fight screens and when scripts are initialising, though I have yet to test this with any lighting or saturation and colour overhaul.

Also, I know you're not a console player, but I'm hearing from people who are some very bad things about Destiny. Most of which I can confirm via watching some footage myself. Don't believe the hype. Borderlands IN SPACE with Peter Dinklage's voice telling you to kill things sounds amazing, on the face of it. It's repetitive, grindy, pretty to look at but utterly uninspired in story, gameplay or progression.

In other words, it's another standard AAA title with an approximate lifespan of about 15-20 hours.

I've been looking at "War for the Overworld" the real successor to Dungeon keeper. Looking good, will probably pick it up.

For those who missed the "Oh fuck, why, why,why did you do that":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA

Seriously, I've seen some appalling pay to win designs but that seems to be actually trying to insult and swindle you. This is beyond the pale though. It's almost worth suggesting a LP just to see how long anyone lasts before rage quitting.

Also, I know you're not a console player, but I'm hearing from people who are some very bad things about Destiny. Most of which I can confirm via watching some footage myself. Don't believe the hype. Borderlands IN SPACE with Peter Dinklage's voice telling you to kill things sounds amazing, on the face of it. It's repetitive, grindy, pretty to look at but utterly uninspired in story, gameplay or progression.

The funny thing about Destiny is that everyone I know who picked it up did so because everyone else was going to play it. Not a single one said "Yeah I'm really excited about the game." The sale was in it being the next event that everyone plays together. I think that's cool and all, but it'd be nice if the game was, you know, good at all.

Admittedly, it does feel a little disjointed and empty at the moment but the core mechanics of shooting aliens and seeing little numbers plink off them is fun. All three classes seem unique and relatively balanced and co-op play is a lot of fun.

The problem is that the social features are woefully underimplemented so if you don't already know a bunch of people playing then it probably gets a) hard and b) lonely.

Also once you reach the soft level cap it turns into a bit of a grind. I am hopeful that Bungie gives the game plenty of support though. If they can do what Blizzard did with Diablo 3 and take a good base game with a few problems and then fix/improve things regularly i'll be happy. Only time and patches will tell I suppose.

I think a lot of the problems are stemming from people going into the game with a range of different expectations. I wanted a fun, co-op space shooter and Destiny is filling that role admirably.

Hey, two years and an expansion pack down the line Diablo 3 is a fun dungeon crawler.

Granted, I hope that it doesn't take that long for Destiny to realise it's potential. There seems to have been a wave of games coming out recently that have promised a lot more than they were able to deliver. Titanfall springs to mind - again a good idea for the base of a game but it never quite felt 'complete' to me.

I loved the hell out of Diablo 2 (and 1. I am horribly old) so it's almost tempting to have another look at it. I just have very little faith left in Blizzard/Activision after the continuous bouts of dumb. Remember Real ID? No way that could have gone horribly wrong. If they drop that always online bullshit required for a single player game, I'll probably throw cash at it and hate myself accordingly. It's clearly a very different environment from the old Blizzard North days but I guess the basics of a Skinner box aren't exactly hard to replicate.

I loved the hell out of Diablo 2 (and 1. I am horribly old) so it's almost tempting to have another look at it. I just have very little faith left in Blizzard/Activision after the continuous bouts of dumb. Remember Real ID? No way that could have gone horribly wrong. If they drop that always online bullshit required for a single player game, I'll probably throw cash at it and hate myself accordingly. It's clearly a very different environment from the old Blizzard North days but I guess the basics of a Skinner box aren't exactly hard to replicate.

Yeah, I revisit Blizzard games for nostalgia purposes only. D3 isn't as terrible as I thought. They have a trial version that allows you to take each class up to level 13, so you can get a feel for it. Pretty reminiscent of DII, but not worth the price of admission, for me anyone.

I loved the hell out of Diablo 2 (and 1. I am horribly old) so it's almost tempting to have another look at it. I just have very little faith left in Blizzard/Activision after the continuous bouts of dumb. Remember Real ID? No way that could have gone horribly wrong. If they drop that always online bullshit required for a single player game, I'll probably throw cash at it and hate myself accordingly. It's clearly a very different environment from the old Blizzard North days but I guess the basics of a Skinner box aren't exactly hard to replicate.

Yeah, I revisit Blizzard games for nostalgia purposes only. D3 isn't as terrible as I thought. They have a trial version that allows you to take each class up to level 13, so you can get a feel for it. Pretty reminiscent of DII, but not worth the price of admission, for me anyone.

*anyway. (DIII is still $40 for a digital download, plus $40 for the expansion)

If you're looking for a similar experience to Diablo II, Junkie, check out Torchlight and Torchlight II. Close to the same dev team, very similar gameplay, and something like $10 if you catch them on a Steam sale.

I'm experimenting with the patcher for Requiem 1.8.1.1 Took me half an hour to realise I had missed a space when specifying the Java memory allocation and so the entire thing failed in a spectacular fashion.

Also, the latest version of MO does work with SkyUI now, perfectly. So there is no reason not to use it.

I'm not gonna lie - I actually think I'm looking forward more to the DLC, especially The Knife of Dunwall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHV4R3cseVE). Corvo's a bit of a blank slate as a character. Not that that's a bad thing, especially when introducing a brand new series and setting. But Daud...the man's got character, and history. And a hell of a voice actor in Michael Madsen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Madsen).

That's some footage from the Dunwall City Trials DLC, which is basically a series of non-storyline related challenges. There were apparently a lot of calls for multiplayer for Dishonored, which I can definitely understand, though the game was never set up with that in mind. So this was the compromise solution.

The Knife of Dunwall was excellent, I actually preferred it to the main story arc, for exactly the reasons you mentioned, corvo is a plank.The voiceless protagonist in FPS worked in Half life because the dialog you had from NPCS was a little tongue in cheek. It worked in skyrim because you can respond with your dialog choices.

But every chapter has many people talking to corvo about beak and serious stuff, it kind of pulls you out of the immersion when everything is awkwardly phrased so as to not get a response.

The Brigmore witches wasn't quite as good but I still enjoyed it a hell of a lot. The funny thing is I didn't realise it was Michael Madsen until I was watching the credits on Brigmore, he is a excellent voice actor.

I can understand why they made that choice though - in any game where any sort of choice is available, the costs for voice-acting quickly spiral out of control, as you have to multiply the responses at the very least to match the number of options, if not more so. I also suspect Bethesda were hedging their bets on whether this would be a success or not, and once it proved to be popular, were more willing to cough up extra money for it in the DLC.

But voice-acting in RPGs is definitely a tricky one. I'm OK with not having a voiced protagonist, so long as the options to express character are there in the dialogue options (like the original Baldurs Gate, for example). But having a voice definitely helps, especially if you're taking on a character with an established history and background.

I can understand why they made that choice though - in any game where any sort of choice is available, the costs for voice-acting quickly spiral out of control, as you have to multiply the responses at the very least to match the number of options, if not more so. I also suspect Bethesda were hedging their bets on whether this would be a success or not, and once it proved to be popular, were more willing to cough up extra money for it in the DLC.

But voice-acting in RPGs is definitely a tricky one. I'm OK with not having a voiced protagonist, so long as the options to express character are there in the dialogue options (like the original Baldurs Gate, for example). But having a voice definitely helps, especially if you're taking on a character with an established history and background.

Its been actively detrimental to some series.

Final Fantasy 10 went with voice acting and small dialogue tress, and it worked really well. Sure you don't REALLy effect the story that much, but the story was so strong it this factor is negligible.

In fact it's one of the few games that has a wonderyears style internal narration, and instead of cheesy it really helped develop the protagonist.

But then all of the FF games that have come since then have abysmal stories, so you really notice how your absence of dialog choices has you on a rail road.Its the number one reason I never want to see a remake of ff7

I noticed it as a real problem in Dragon Age 2, where you were basically railroaded into making the decision the devs wanted, again and again, just done in a diplomatic, sarcastic or jerkass manner.

That aside, some amusement. A Requiem "sort of noob" approaches the Valtheim Towers for the first time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwP_OGoqwnY&feature=player_detailpage&list=UU9udLVVyF-hhT1_UFh3GwgQ#t=789).

That game above, the one that is apparently set in England, that looks AMAZING awesome!

Also, did you mention a mod that gets rid of spiders? I looked in this thread and didn't see it, and searching by tags or "spider" didn't help on the mod site.

Try "Insects Begone" on Nexus Mods. Gives you the options to get rid of all spiders and charaus, replacing them with "Invading Bears" and "Invading Skeevers". Should also work with any mods that add Frostbite spiders back in...just make sure the "Insects Begone" esp file is below all such files in the mod load order. However, it won't work for any mods which add any new kinds of spiders, like Skyrim Immersive Creatures (though that comes with a "No Spiders" option) and Moonpath to Elseweyr.

Also wont work with Requiem, but that's because it alters the spiders in such a way that the mod doesn't fully recognise them.

I can confirm from extensive personal testing it works, even on other mods. When in doubt, move the main insectsbegone.esp to the bottom of the load order, and it will overwrite all changes.

For example: at the moment, I'm beta-testing Perkus Maximus, a mod which overhauls perks, combat, magic, weapons and (to an extent) immersion. Insects Begone works with that, because PM doesn't touch frostbite spiders at all. With that testing, I'm also using Arissa - The Wandering Rogue. Arissa's personal quest involves a cave with a lot of frosbite spiders (as noted on the mod page), including a giant frostbite spiders. Insects Begone works with that. I've also used Insects Begone with Interesting NPCs.

Also worth noting: Insects Begone gets rid of Nimhe in Markarth and Babette's pet, as both are created from the base frostbite spider model.

Basically, the only way it can fail is if the spider is not a frostbite spider as the game recognises it (like in Requiem, as they come in several different varieties, or SIC with its "tundra spider" variants) or because the load order is wrong. Those are the only circumstances under which it does not work.

Requiem 1.8.1.1 is now setup on my desktop. I played about 4 hours last night, with no CTDs or dramatic oddities...well, except the Sabre Cat who didn't viciously murder me, but instead padded off into the tundra. But then, I think their AI makes them ambush predators, and by walking backwards while keeping it in direct view, I may have dissuaded it from attacking.

If that didn't work, I was going to shield bash the nearby wood elf to the ground and run off, leaving him to his fate.

Bandits are definitely tougher in 1.8. I got almost one-shot by the two up the hill from Riverwood, and was brutally murdered by the skoom dealers near Whiterun's walls. On the other hand, the guards are even tougher - two Whiterun guards managed to take down two heavily armoured bandits (as in, steel plate/orcish armour, steel weapons and potions) with bandit archer backup without breaking a sweat. Also, the new guard armour is sweet.

I'm feeling that Hunterborn may not be the best option for my playthrough, as I'm finding it gimps poison significantly (because I can no longer gather wolf hearts so easily). Given I'm already going to be playing the weakest class style in the game, using only the weakest magic school at the start, a school which has been further nerfed by the 1.8 changes to bandits (by increasing their magicka pool) and I'm refusing to ally with the faction who would most increase my combat viability....I probably don't need to gimp myself any further.

I mean, after she becomes a Nightingale, my character will become a badass, and pursue magical studies with some diligence. But before that, she's just another thieftreasure hunter misunderstood archaeologist.

Forgot to mention, Azirok is also back, so 1.8 patches are not far away. I could actually start recording now, with the already existing patches....but I really want Civil War Overhaul, Immersive Patrol and Interesting NPCs working first.

I also need time to decide between Arissa and Inigo as my chosen travelling companion. On the one hand, Inigo is hilarious. On the other, that ebony bow....And on the one hand, Arissa is quite useful and somewhat more practically useful than Inigo (because she makes poisons and lockpicks appear out of thin air). On the other hand, her quest involves lots of frostbite spiders.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure wolves have been nerfed in 1.8. That, or Block I is really powerful. My test character, a Nord ranger, was taking wolves apart quite easily, in hand-to-hand combat. I suppose something had to be nerfed though, to compensate for the more deadly bandits. Otherwise, you're going to have to kill a hell of a lot of mudcrabs to train your sword arm.

Also, had to remove Skyrim Immersive Creatures. A shame, but it was producing a 100% reproducible crashes at the Halted Stream Camp. Maybe it was the combination of that location and another mod and SIC, but either way, it was annoying the shit out of me.

Also, had to remove Skyrim Immersive Creatures. A shame, but it was producing a 100% reproducible crashes at the Halted Stream Camp. Maybe it was the combination of that location and another mod and SIC, but either way, it was annoying the shit out of me.

Using Dawn of Riften (a great city overhaul which adds a lot of clutter and rats to Riften)

Under attack by a Master Vampire.

Followed by an attack by a Thief (which, amusingly, seems to be recognised as a bandit by OBIS and so has weapons, armour and stats from their level lists, leading to a bandit with a dwemer warhammer and iron banded armour trying to pickpocket people).

Followed by an attack by a dragon (improved by Deadly Dragons, Dragon Combat Overhaul).

Followed by an attack by 5 dragons (the dragon called for reinforcements).

On a system with close to 100 mods, including HD textures for dragons, static mesh improvements, weapon look improvements and changes to weapon stats and the combat system:

Will cause the frame rate to drop to very, very low levels, and possibly crash it. But it is a glorious clusterfuck in the meantime.

Using Dawn of Riften (a great city overhaul which adds a lot of clutter and rats to Riften)

Under attack by a Master Vampire.

Followed by an attack by a Thief (which, amusingly, seems to be recognised as a bandit by OBIS and so has weapons, armour and stats from their level lists, leading to a bandit with a dwemer warhammer and iron banded armour trying to pickpocket people).

Followed by an attack by a dragon (improved by Deadly Dragons, Dragon Combat Overhaul).

Followed by an attack by 5 dragons (the dragon called for reinforcements).

On a system with close to 100 mods, including HD textures for dragons, static mesh improvements, weapon look improvements and changes to weapon stats and the combat system:

Will cause the frame rate to drop to very, very low levels, and possibly crash it. But it is a glorious clusterfuck in the meantime.

Freeky, I've been experimenting and I think Realistic Lighting Overhaul may be better than ELFX on a lower end machine like yours. The file size itself is smaller, and I've been using it with my SkyRe install with no discernible FPS loss (SkyRe isn't super script intensive, but it can run a lower end machine's frame rate and cell loading times down considerably).

But if ELFX is running fine on your machine then there is no need to make changes. ELFX gives more of a "fantasy" feel with the lighting, IMO, whereas RLO is more...well, realistic. So, personal aesthetic preferences, essentially.

Which one is ELFX? I didn't see anything in your initial list for me with that acronym. Anything to make the game look better without dropping the frame rate even more is a bonus, so I'll definitely check it out.

Quick question, am I correct in thinking that you can't download NMM onto a Windows 8 machine? I keep getting error messages downloading the program you need (which doesn't have a Windows 8 version, at least not obviously) to download NMM, but that may just be a horrible virus thing.

ELFX is Enhanced Lights and FX. I thought I mentioned it, though now I'm not so sure.

I only use Windows 7, so I have no idea if it works on Windows 8 or not. Does 8 have that backwards compatability thing, which allows you to run a program like you're using an earlier version of Windows? Just checked, it should work on 8.1 no problems, though apparently it can sometimes be tricky. Video (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCgQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrBImo_GMmg8&ei=TLAtVP-yHqnW7Qbs1oFo&usg=AFQjCNHUlCpNb4QjXsb3R3O4RbtG3vMgMA&sig2=t42P5p_v1ai97T2Wai9LUg&bvm=bv.76802529,d.ZGU) may help.

Also worth noting that Nexus does sometimes suffer with serious downtime and server errors...kinda ridiculous, given the advertising and subscriper fees they are raking in, but I had problems downloading some files today.

Yeah, Windows 8 is a tricky beast, I hear. But the modding community will have the resources out there...somewhere. Best bet is just google "how to install nmm on windows 8" until you find a solution.

Well, Azirok should be at work making patches from tomorrow. So I'll probably start making videos again around when they come out. I still have things to download and folders to sort out, not to mention juggling two jobs, a course and jobsearching.

So...since my new computer is bust, I'm back on the old one. Because I'm getting Requiem withdrawal symptoms, I've been looking at a lightweight implementation of a more roleplay attuned game, in line with Morrowind or similar. Here is what I've come up with.

Morrowloot 4E Edition (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50740/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D50740%26preview%3D&pUp=1): basically, delevels loot, and puts in handplaced items instead. Now you'll find dwarven metal in dwemer ruins, elven weapons are carried by the Thalmor, Orcish weapons are carried by (wait for it)...orcs, and very few, very important people have ebony or glass armour. There is one set of daedric armour in the game (and you can't craft it anymore). I'm using the Lore Weapon expansion patch, as an alternative to Immersive Weapons.

Hypothermia (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6745/?): as a light weight replacement for Frostfall. Hypothermia is smaller and less script intensive, I believe.

Immersive Armours. Of course. But in accordance with Morrowloot dictates, I've removed all above steel/corundum armours from the distribution lists. They actually recommend removing all of them, but I'm making a value judgement here - if an armour comes from readily available base materials, even if it requires superior perks, it should be distributed in world. So stuff like Apotheos and Falkreath armour get to stay. Imperial Knight armour, however, is right out.

Scarcity (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49496/?). Use it to reduce loot, alongside Morrowloot (in a sense) and make the economy more brutal. Also using Trade and Barter and some quest gold tweaks to make Skyrim much more expensive.

Also, despite an unfortunate name, this (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52071/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D52071%26preview%3D&pUp=1) seems like the best lightweight race overhaul out there.

Obviously, you have the SkyRe and Requiem racial adjustments which are pretty awesome, and Enai Sinon's Resplendent Races (which is really cool, but does use scripts - like a lot of his mods. Definitely for higher end computers), but if you just want something simple, balanced and lore-friendly, this seems the way to go. Combining it with Character Creation Overhaul gives a nice Morrowind-y feel to the game, I wont lie.

OK, so after spending a couple of weeks making sure my computer isn't going to shit itself and die on me, I'm fairly confident to start recording again.

Order of business:

1) Dishonored. Save games were lost when the computer was repaired, but I can get back to where I was with no problem. This will also give me a chance to pick up the runes I missed and pick abilities I've since found to be more useful.

2) Skyrim. Azirok has still not released the patches, after 3 weeks of waiting. I was going to ditch Civil War Overhaul anyway - while my impression is that it is more stable now, it is still not stable enough and in particular I've found the Siege of Windhelm to be buggy under certain conditions, through several playthroughs. iNeed will be replacing Realistic Needs and Diseases, and because the Immersive Weapons Patch seems to be dropping daedric tier weapons where there shouldn't be any, I'm going to try Lore Weapon Expansion instead, which should not need patching.

If things get too easy at level 30+, I will install OBIS, assuming it has been patched for by that point. If it's still too easy, I will consider Revenge of the Enemies, which has been patched for. That said, for my particular character, things should be plenty hard enough for at least the first 20 levels. Silver weapons have been nerfed somewhat, bandits are harder, crossbows require perks to take advantage of armour-piercing properties.

As a consequence of offensive Illusion getting something of a nerf (basically, bandits and other mid-tier enemies now have larger magicka pools, making them more resistant to such spells), what I am considering is starting off using Illusion as well, as it's a useful skill for a thief, and then after Trinity Restored occurs, branching into Conjuration magic. Conjuration is fairly powerful (not as powerful as Destruction, but is anything?), furthermore I think it makes sense that the champion of a Daedric Prince would be interested in using the forces of the Oblivion Realms to give them an edge in battle. No necromancy though, necromancers are sick fucks (see Arondil for more on that). Just daedric summons and bound weapons. Between Illusion and Conjuration, I should be able to lock down any truly dangerous foes while staying out of the firing range myself. It's also more interesting than shooting a fireball out of the shadows and watching everything die, or just sneaking by every high level encounter.

Eh, the beta was OK. I mean, there were balance and GUI issues which needed to be sorted out, I'm not gonna lie, but nothing major.

I think the main issue is the localization language one. They're now offering support in Italian, which wasn't previously on the cards. For such a language intensive game, that is going to take a while.

Edit: Doing some final tests on my Skyrim modlist today. Hopefully, by the end of next week, I should be in a position to record and upload consistently.

I will say this: though I've criticised Skyrim's plot before now, I've actually come around to the idea that it was the implementation and gameplay that are more at fault. When you delve into the (deeply bizarre) lore, it actually makes the game at least 10 times as awesome. The Thalmor come across as more evil and inept than they do in the game, too.

But yes. Planescape: Torment is definitely one of a kind, which is not a good thing. Fallout: New Vegas is meant to be quite good as well, also from Obsidian, but I've not played it myself, so I cannot comment. There were also significant time and engine constraints with that game. And I have a copy of Alpha Protocol downloaded, an "espionage RPG" from Obsidian, which sounds potentially interesting. Yet to give it a try though.

For Plot and Lore though, Skyrim will always be competing against Morrowind which beats it like a child labourer. The level of detail given to the Nerevarine main plot alone makes skyrim look very light indeed. I personally preferred it to the "You're half dragon, yo." way that skyrim unfolded.

The strange thing is, I suspect the overall plot of skyrim could be considerably better if the ordered was altered somewhat (Visit Sovngarde earlier, Learn lore from previous dragonborn and then apply that knowledge to finding/completing X objectives in the main world.

Example out my head (read - arse) - Carted to Helgen, char creation and execution. Black screen, comes to in intro dungeon eventually leading to sovngarde and encounters with previous DB and intro to who/what you are. Revived, time altering bullshit moving you to second in the queue, Helgen can proceed as normal, first mission now to track and slay your first dragon and proceed with destiny(read main plot). Or something. It just felt like there should have more attention paid to the sequence of events/encounters.

Did you ever get round to Watchdogs? From what I've heard it's somewhat disappointing, which is probably Ubisofts corporate slogan nowadays.

Not yet, no. But that's pretty much what I've heard. Ubisoft's development cycles are way too fast, and overreliant on the same tired old mechanics of the same tired old engines. Call of Assassins Creed Duty: Black Flag Ops is the perfect example, of course.

Skyrim could've been approached in a few different ways. More focus on Akatosh, Tiber Septim, the Thalmor and Mehrunes Dagon would've helped quite a bit. A lot of the interesting things about Skyrim have been deduced from previous Elder Scrolls games and materials...like why Hermaeus Mora pays such attention to the Dragonborn, what the Thalmor are up to (though Kirkbride's C0da and Landfall deal with that, to a degree), whether it's the Dragonborn or Alduin who is a Shezzarine (it's probably not Alduin), the "oversoul" ascension of the Dragonborn and so on.

After escaping Helgen, save the game. Open the console (if you don't know how to open the console, press "`" or "¬" on your keyboard).

type in "tcl" without the quotation marks, and press enter. Then type in "player.setav speedmult 1500" and press enter.

What this does is it removes the collision physics, and allows you to move really fast. In short, you can fly. Look up to the sky and run.

Fly around Skyrim. Harass enemies, zip around the place, go climb a mountain or 10. If your game is stable, it will stutter and suffer frame drop in places, but it will not crash. This will be pretty severe framedrop, because you're basically forcing the game to render the cells as quickly as possible...I got it down to 3 FPS quite a few times. Sometimes, the game will momentarily freeze and you will need to wait a second until it responds again. This is all normal and good. You should be able to fly around for anywhere between 5-30 minutes with no problems.

If you do have a mod issue, however, your game will crash pretty quickly with this method.

I was using this earlier today, while testing Skyrim Immersive Creatures (which still refuses to work on my computer). It is definitely that mod, because removing it removed the crashes completely, just like before. I even managed to correctly install ENBoost (which significantly upgrades your game stability and available memory) and tested it with that, to no avail. Either one of my "must-have" mods conflicts with it, or else even my computer cannot handle it. Which is entirely possible. New computer is good, but the graphics card is only a GTX 660. A damn decent card, but compared to the current, high end cards, it may as well be a potato.

I might have to try Sands of Time again instead. If I can find settings which don't annoy the shit out of me.

I'm starting to find Sands of Time settings which don't annoy the shit out of me.

I still have some tweaking to do. Taking Faldar's Tooth (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Faldar%27s_Tooth) turned from a 10 minute venture into something closer to an hour. On the road to Ivarstead - attacked by wolves. Lots of wolves. Fair enough, I'm mounted, it's not a problem. Then I'm attacked by bandits. Not a problem either.

Get to Faldar's Tooth. Bandits attack. Because I'm mounted, they can see me and so call for reinforcements. Only a few extra, but they are OBIS bandits, so they're tougher and smarter than normal. Then, a "peddler" who was walking by starts to attack me. As it turns out, he was a Morag Tong/Mephala assassin in disguise. Then some Elite Vigilants of Stendarr come along...since I don't have any daedric artifacts yet, they join in on the fighting and kill a few bandits before being taken out themselves. Inigo spends most of his time paralysed by poisons. Thanks a lot, you useless skooma addict.

After 10 minutes or so, I get past the main gate. Once in the castle, I get down the stairs, and another assassin follows me through the door. She sets off the trap, killing herself, but not before poisoning my character and requiring the use of a lot of healing potions (even in Dark Scrubberhood armour, that stuff was just eating my life away. Maybe Deadly Poisons is increasing the damage even beyond SoT's intended levels). In the fort, things are slightly better, as I can use stealth to my advantage, taking out isolated bandits before mopping up the more concentrated groups. That said, because I'm using SSR and Combat Evolved and Duel, staying in stealth was not easy and the times I was exposed, the bandits would call for reinforcements.

Get to the outside section. Wolves start attacking the gates. Bandits see me killing them, call for reinforcements. The bandit chief, due to exceptional AI (Combat Evolved) realises the fort is under attack and starts raining down crossbow fire from the very top of the tower. It's almost impossible to hit him, due to the protection up there, but he can and does rain down some serious pain on myself and Inigo. We fight our way past the bandits and rampaging wolves and pit wolves up the tower, to finally slay the bandit chief and take his delicious loot.

It's now night time, and with RotE enhanced vampires roaming about, I'm debating whether to stay in the fort and risk being ambushed in my sleep, or making straight for Ivarstead.

So, settings wise. I've turned off the Zombie Apocalypse entirely. I did give it a go, but Whiterun, Windhelm and Ivarstead were being attacked simultaneously, and Whiterun was pretty bad. I think there were about 30+ zombies massing outside the city walls, and they're very hard to take down in close combat.

Currently using the "ale-drinker" preset with enforced lore mode, once I find the settings I like I'll no doubt put it on Spartan. I turned off Burning Inferno, turned on lore-friendly Silver Hand and Vampire Hunters. I turned off rats entirely, that shit is annoying. Same for spiders, and not just because I don't like them. The hallucinogenic spider is annoying as hell. I'm also looking for options to turn off the refugees entirely...that encounter isn't something that really interests me.

I think I need to play with the cooldowns and spawn increasers more. I don't mind a bit of variety, but fighting through 7 extra spawns in a single area is a bit much.

But yes. If you want fun times, I fully recommend Combat Evolved, OBIS and (significantly configured) Sands of Time.

OK, I'm hoping to have an optimal setup by the end of this week. I intended to use last week to do this, but I got caught up in job applications.

Lore Weapons Expansion is out, unless someone patches it. Bows don't work correctly, the Cyrodiilic longbows are far too quick. So back to Immersive Weapons. If I get an accidental Daedric weapon drop....I dunno, I'll just sell it, or swap it out for a lore appropriate weapon or something.

I'm also looking into the mysterious and wonderful world of ENBs, thanks to some advice I got recently. Have to do all the configuration properly and look into texture optimisation of my other mods, which may take a while...but I've seen some very impressive results from less than top-tier computers, so I figure it is worth the effort.

With the new Call of Duty being released today the game's lead developer Michael Condrey told Newsbeat: "I certainly wouldn't characterise the community of fans I know and had the pleasure to engage with as toxic or misogynistic."The community as a whole is very healthy, engaged and thoughtful and probably like anything anywhere well outside of gaming.

HO HO HO!

5/5 for that man for keeping a straight face. This is the series that's best known for 12 year olds screaming various slurs while pushing some highly questionable ideologies.

I can only assume the man has never engaged with any of the fans of his series, ever.

I think about the only thing more prevalent on Call of Duty games than 3edgy5me misogyny and homophobia from 12 year olds is spurious accusations of cheating by butthurt losers...and it's usually done by much the same kind of people. Hey, someone got a higher k/d ratio than you, and doesn't hide in the corner using Ghost and an automatic sniper rifle all game? FILTHY FUCKING AIMBOTTER. Be sure to downvote them and send them a badly written piece of hatemail after the game (fav example of the former (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwSAST-fJJE&index=107&list=PLc3HxdHlK2EzVkaAi1qorTgxRD7yJvt8v) andthe latter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYqS0FxFj8&list=PLc3HxdHlK2EzVkaAi1qorTgxRD7yJvt8v&index=89)).

It's not the worst gaming community out there, but it's the largest bad gaming community.

As far as I can see, there are two Gamergates. One is about ethics in gaming journalism (srsly). The other is about harassing women (srsly).

Sometimes those two groups overlap. Sometimes they fail to denounce the actions of so-called "allies" hard enough. But sometimes they don't.

Personally, my feeling is that it's been obvious for a long time that gaming journalism is corrupt as fuck, and the Zoe Quinn saga, while pretty blatant, is nothing especially new. The outlets most responsible for such things are quite happy to highlight the (actually horrific) harassment of female developers and game commentators, if only to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

The "ethics in journalism" bit makes me shiver with horrormirth, and in a way is inexorably linked with the misogyny bit. I know you already know, but the fact that the whole thing kicked off by having a pissed off ex make unsubstantiated and later repudiated accusations against his X-GF, combined with a complete lack of understanding of how entertainment criticism (it's not journalism, people) actually works, is one massive facepalm. Trust me, I was an entertainment editor at a magazine for a few years; it's all payola, eventually. Srsly, if a real journalist had tried to make those initial accusations, he would have gone down harder than Stephen Glass.

As far as I can see, there are two Gamergates. One is about ethics in gaming journalism (srsly). The other is about harassing women (srsly).

Sometimes those two groups overlap. Sometimes they fail to denounce the actions of so-called "allies" hard enough. But sometimes they don't.

Personally, my feeling is that it's been obvious for a long time that gaming journalism is corrupt as fuck, and the Zoe Quinn saga, while pretty blatant, is nothing especially new. The outlets most responsible for such things are quite happy to highlight the (actually horrific) harassment of female developers and game commentators, if only to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

Ay, If the harassment crowd could be dropped into an oubliette, you'd get a clear portrait of valid gripes, where pretty much all large gaming media sites are a pay for positive review for whatever iterative shit comes out. Of course these gripes are and remain Indistinguishable from the ethics in movie reporting via large media outlets.

If anything carving out the gaming subset of ethics in journalism at all seems strange.

Honestly, if someone asks me what I consider a very clear case of abuse of power against critics in gaming, the first thing that comes to my mind, even to this day, is a particular group that tried to issue copyright notices to get TotalBiscuit's Youtube page shut down. Basically, TotalBiscuit got permission from a company to review a beta version of a game they were planning to release.

He made a video which was critical of the game. Not unfairly so, TB is IMO a very fair reviewer and does not go in for mindless bashing or mean spirited criticism, even of genres he may not personally like. However, when the company in question discovered this was the case, they pressured Youtube with copyright notices to take down his videos, contributing to a strike against him under Youtube's community guidelines and so caused his channel to be threatened with closure. They claimed he did not have permission to post the video and, when he showed otherwise, they said they had rescinded the permission, as was their right.

Eventually, Youtube took down the strike against him, and TotalBiscuit uploaded a review (without any footage) alongside an explanation of the subsequent events. But TotalBiscuit is kinda a big deal, in online game reviews. That one piddling developer could temporarily, and almost premamently, silence him over a critical review shows how easily game critics can come under pressure when they actually dare to have an independent opinion.

Meanwhile, on the flipside, if you're willing to sell your critical faculties to the highest bidder, and have an audience, you can get pretty much anything you want for free. Not just the games - the hardware upgrades to play the games, the right equipment, early access, you name it. And, needless to say, while those reviewers are made to sign non-disclosure agreements, so long as they stick to those terms, which are far more lenient than the legal gray hole in which most Youtube partners operate, they are perfectly free to upload whatever footage and music they want.

And then there is the spectacle of the major gaming sites whose advertising is almost entirely paid for by the people they are supposed to be objectively reporting on. I mean, there is a reason IGN's reviews are a joke, it's not that they simply employ morons. And that Xbox Magazine is actually considered a good source on game reporting.... :eek:

But I think anyone with half a brain already knew this was the case, even before the current drama.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't think video game journalism is any more complicit in this kind of corruption than the rest of the entertainment industry.

Honestly, it wouldn't matter so much at all, if not for the fact that game developers are shoving shit down everyone's throats while insisting its prime beef, using the "critical reviews" as proof. This year has been quite exceptional, as virtually every hotly tipped AAA rated game that has had any sort of media coverage has turned out to be garbage. Watch Dogs? Check. Titanfall? Check. Dark Souls 2? Check. Destiny? Check times infinity.

It's actually gotten to the point I have high hopes for Dragon Age: Inquisition, simply because most of the reviews are saying it sucks and giving laughably inaccurate information. I can't see Assassins Creed: Unity or Black Ops: Advanced Warfare exactly thrilling people, given their short development cycles.

But by the time everyone realises they suck, the companies will have their cash. The hype machine will have achieved its goal, and wont give a fuck about post-purchase blues.

There are a few exceptions, Alien Isolation had fairly glowing reviews and it's the most creative and enjoyable game I've played all year, and despite it being first person, and having guns in it, it manages to entrench itself firmly in the First person stealth genre more so than thief (this years mediocre one) or even Dishonored.

It's very entertaining to play a game that gives you several guns when no situation is improved by using them.

It doesn't mean that they dont treat the journalistic outlets as any less of an extension of their marketing department then say COD does, rather in spite of that, it coincidentally happened to be a great game.

So, this is what I've been helping to test for the past couple of months.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59849/?

I do recommend. Functionally, quite a few of the perks are similar to SkyRe, but the overall number of perks has been pared down from the ridiculously specialised builds than T3nd0 encouraged with SkyRe. Also, it's a lot more compatible, as it makes much less changes than SkyRe.

Notably:

No race changes. No standing stone changes. No combat AI changes (though bleed damage has made a return). No experience gain changes. No levelled zone changes. No changes to enemies.

Wayfarer as a perk tree makes a welcome return, as does Fingersmith (now renamed "Dexterity"). Alchemy has been significantly overhauled to make it much more useful and powerful - there are several new poison effects which are quite powerful. Perkus Maximus has also been designed to work with the "Wintermyst Echantments" overhaul and should be included as part of the main download.

Personally, I recommend playing it with Deadly Dragons, DCO, OBIS, OBIS Redone, Revenge of the Enemies, Trade and Barter, Frostfall, Better Vampires, Bloodmoon Rising and Improved Artifacts installed. At least, that's the mod list I've been working with (note: Bloodmoon full compatability not proven, but the only conflict should be bonus unarmed damage being converted into "damage reflected", which is no biggie).

Mostly, these mods are compatible on their own, or else with the patches located here http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59257/?#content

Thanks. And yeah - that's a fairly minor overhaul, compared to what people with top end machines and no consideration for gameplay improving mods can do (example (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30936/?)).

I mean, I could probably install fancy depth of field applying effects, ambient occlusion something or other, 4k Super HD grass textures and all the rest...but I'd rather have something worth playing and not quite as pretty, ya know?

After all the talk I've heard over the last year about it, I finally picked up Dark Souls II during the Steam sale. All everyone tells you is about how difficult it is, how punishing, etc. And that's true, it really is absolutely merciless. The worldwide death counter for the PC version, which is still pretty new, is in the 249 million range. I love that it's a game that doesn't coddle you. There are no handy little shining INTERACT WITH ME objects or lengthy, out of place NPC expositions, and I think that's the real appeal to me.

The challenge of the game is its selling point, and what everyone talks about, but that's just a gimmick. It is, though, hugely rewarding to finally get past that one spot that's been killing you over and over (fuck YOU, The Pursuer - I hope you liked that ballista shot to the tits).

What's really doing it for me is the understated nature of it. You're dropped into the gorgeous, dark world with only cryptic instruction. Everyone seems to know what's going on except for you, and you're just blindly going forward into hellish danger with barely a reference to game mechanics. Every now and then you see a blood splatter on the ground and you watch the ghost of another player die against something you can't see, and all you know is that you're fighting it next. Little scrawled notes on the ground from other players say things like "trap ahead" "weakness: leg" "try torch" and for all their simplicity they could be an entire manual. In that overwhelming sense of danger, you finally come to the end of a tough fight and there's a little note that says "I did it!" with 100+ votes, all players who got there separately and give each other a small pat on the back, and that bit of camaraderie from people you'll never interact with is more meaningful than the cliched storylines in most modern games.

I'm barely out of the first major area right now, and maybe my attitude will change, but I think there's a lot to be said for that level of immersion. Unfortunately, I think with all the success the game has met, the lesson developers will take out of it is going to be MAKE IT HARD LOL PEOPLE LIKE HARD.

Have you played the original Dork Souls? My personal impression was that it was a better game, despite the lack of PC porting support and the need for extensive modding. DSII was definitely better than a good number of games out there, but it didn't quite compare to the original, IMO.

Also seriously consider installing Requiem for Skyrim if you enjoyed Dark Souls. The combat is very comparable, especially below level 20.

Have you played the original Dork Souls? My personal impression was that it was a better game, despite the lack of PC porting support and the need for extensive modding. DSII was definitely better than a good number of games out there, but it didn't quite compare to the original, IMO.

Also seriously consider installing Requiem for Skyrim if you enjoyed Dark Souls. The combat is very comparable, especially below level 20.

No, but I've been hearing about the first one and Demon's Souls for years now, and meaning to pick them up. It'll be on my radar for the next Steam sale, though. My friends who have played both recommended not bothering with the first one, but there seems to be a bit of a divided base on which of the two is actually a better game so I'll have to try for myself.

Your Requiem posts were awesome and I've more than once considered diving in to Skyrim modding because of them. It seems like most modders I know become tinkerers, always fine tuning their load outs and dealing with bugs and such. That's been warding me off of modding for years now. It may just be time to get over that and start fucking around with them.

I've not played Demon Souls myself, but I've heard from people who have played all three that it's either that or DS1 which is probably the best in the series. Not to say DSII is bad...its just not quite as good.

And yeah, that is the problem with modding. Fortunately, Requiem kinda gets around that, because there is so little out there that is compatible with it. There's like three or four dedicated modders, churning out compatability patches, but really there aren't many. Immersive Weapons/Armour, Dragon Combat Overhaul, Weapon and Armor Fixes Remade/Clothing and Clutter Fixes/Complete Crafting Overhaul, Frostfall/Realistic Needs and Diseases/Hunterborn (there is a patch which combines for all three of those, and it is awesome). Oh, and Revenge of the Enemies, for some fucking reason. I mean, vampires and dragon priests are already scary in Requiem, end game style bosses, they don't need nearly endless magicka pools, armour, HP and multiple summoning spells.

I definitely consider Dark Souls 1 to be the more polished experience, in terms of level design and story. DS2, however, has VASTLY improved multiplayer and a few gameplay adjustments that I quite enjoyed (dual-weilding, etc).

The three DLCs for DS2 are very good, I would say just about as good as the DLC "Artorias of the Abyss" was for DS1. DS2 is slated for a sort of re-release this year, "Scholar of the First Sin," which will add, among other things, more lore (about time).

I picked up Elite: Dangerous the weekend before last but didn't really have time to start playing it at the time.

It has served as the perfect distraction. Combat is fun, but very engaging. Right now, I don't really want anything I have to think about. I want something I can turn on and switch my brain off to. Trading fits that perfectly. There's just something fun about jumping around an insanely huge galaxy, playing a space trucker.

There are, broadly speaking, three professionals. Combat pilot, trader, and explorer. Since there's no classes you can mingle a bit depending on ship loadout, and it breaks down a bit further between bounty hunting/piracy and bulk goods/specialist goods/rare goods/smuggling. Right now, it seems like the general consensus is that explorers and fighters need more ways to earn money to pay for the very top end ships, but traders can get there very quickly.

There's 400 billion stars, and the galaxy is shared between players (though not necessarily at the same time; you choose whether to play in 'open' mode or 'solo', though everyone shares the same galaxy as trading/missions etc change the factions in it - requiring a permanent internet connection). It is also utterly beautiful, with a vast array of different types of stars and stations.

I don't know if it is great as a game? It feels very simple to me right now, and I've no idea if I'll be playing it in six months time... but it is a great way of feeling like you're achieving something without actually... achieving anything.

And I get to pretend I'm playing Boardwalk Empire in Space, running liquor around to stations and trying to cause shortfalls in supply. If only I'd thought to call my pilot Nucky.

So I've been playing the Interesting NPCs (http://3dnpc.com/) mod sections of Skyrim, in my roflstomp/mess around/do whatever SkyRe install (because I'm waiting for T3nd0 to fix the bugs in Dexterity and Speech for PerMa 1.2).

Is pretty good. I've been doing some of the actual quests, instead of just talking to people, and they're not bad. Not difficult, per se (aside from the self-imposed no fast travel and no save-scumming limitations), but with far more dialogue and far more interesting than anything in vanilla Skyrim, including the main quest. I've just finished up Raven of Anvil (http://3dnpc.com/wiki/interesting-npcs/quests/full-quests/the-raven-of-anvil/), which was practically tailor made for my character, given they're a bard and a thief themselves. Dusk on Anvil Harbor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vdxk0OmzZ7s#t=101) was a pretty good song, too.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Ending went a little sideways but that may be me.

How long did it take? (please avoid spoilers, I just started)I don't get the lack of respect mages get in this game, they can do insane amounts of damage. Granted, I usually hit one of my own as well but once i get some fireresistance gear for my frontline characters there won't be a problem.

I'm only just downloading it today (been busy with...life). From what I'm hearing though, it's a combination of the best of BG2, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment.

I've got 14 hours in it now.Fun fact: you can own and run a keep. I've loved city building in RPG's since Breath of Fire 2. The keep has some kind of infinite dungeon under it, constantly getting additions.

There are many shoutouts to their backers though, often 10 fan-written ghost stories per area and all graves/memorials are fan-written. They can break immersion.

Meh, if I wanted immersion, I'd play Skyrim/Requiem/Frostfall/RnD/Hunterborn.

The minor drama about one of the backers having an "offensive" poem was amusing. It wasn't that offensive, IMO, although undeniably a little tasteless. Obsidian did exactly the right thing - they contacted the backer and asked, in light of the complaint, if he wanted to change it. He provided an alternate poem, making fun of the drama, and everything was good.

Well, except for the Gamergaters getting up in arms about Obsidian "selling out" to the "feminist agenda". But that's practically expected nowadays. I have no doubt Killing Floor 2 will be criticised for selling out to the feminist agenda, because it's about ethics in slaying zombies, or something.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Ending went a little sideways but that may be me.

How long did it take? (please avoid spoilers, I just started)I don't get the lack of respect mages get in this game, they can do insane amounts of damage. Granted, I usually hit one of my own as well but once i get some fireresistance gear for my frontline characters there won't be a problem.

Call it approx 50 hours or so, some significant chunks missed and/or ignored (Companion quests/ misc sidequests). Custom party of 4, hit level cap around 2/3's of the way through. Level cap surprisingly low, thought it would have been higher. Apparently expansions in works comparable in size to the expansion for Baldurs gate 1.

Overall, I'd say:

Plot - Nowhere near Planescape: Torment. Very little is ever likely to be, but it's on par with say baldurs gate 1 in terms of overall size/scope/potential setup. How it's handled, well, that's another matter.

Combat - More intuitive than IWD, somewhat more forgiving mainly due to the potential interface options. Mechanics have been rewritten from whatever BG2 (?) was and it works largely for the better.

Actual fun - Pretty damn fun. Will be good to get a spoiler thread up when appropriate as there's a couple of "Eh, what the fuck?" that I'm replaying to try and figure out now. Loading times seemed a bit excessive but no BSOD or gamebreaking issues. I wouldn't say "best of BG2/PST/IDW combined, but it's a damn good attempt and often comes close. In general they seem to have built the foundations for a pretty solid IP so with any luck they'll be doing more with the setting

There seems to be solid plans for a sequel, and the basis of which I can guess but would involve spoilers to fuck and back.

It's also somewhat questionable about how the expansions will work, either as just additional explorable content or furthering the main plot. If main plot, then great. If just content, less so.

I think my only real gripe with the game (beyond some plot elements/presentation) is in the presentation of the main plot. It's very strongly reminiscent of BG1 with the low-level/relatively minimal direction. Compare that to how BG2 was presented with relatively constant main plot pushes/rewards. The XP system ties into that mechanic strongly with less emphasis on "kill all the things". Though there are arguably several benefits for doing so, XP isn't the main. Moving on to the next quest stage is where the bulk comes from. This becomes a little odd in places when you're probably overlevelled for the area/quest undertaken.

Between them, Bethesda and Valve have successfully managed to make the Skyrim modding scene implode with Valve's "paid mods" scheme.

Basically, Valve and Bethesda said it would now be cool for modders to charge for their mods in the Steam Workshop. The modder takes 25%, with Steam and Valve splitting the rest. In theory it sounds good, in a way, because modders often put 100s, if not 1000s of hours into their mods with little in the way of recognition.

But oh man the implementation has been awful. Firstly, modders only get to see the profits if they achieve over a certain threshold of overall earnings. Secondly, their cut is so small, considering this is a game that has been out for almost 5 years at this point, it's practically insulting. Then there are the legal issues...most mods rely on assets and scripts that were developed by other modders. Most modders are fine with simple acknowledgement...back when modding was a free system. Now people who are determined to keep their mods free are having their intellectual property used as part of paying mods, without their permission. And that's the other thing - the Steam Workshop is notoriously badly policed. Mods from there steal from the Nexus mod site quite freely, and Valve are very slow to react to claims of theft. Now people will have to pay to see if their work is being stolen. And there is a question of support and updates...with free mods, if things didn't work, eh, whatever. You didn't pay for it. Now Bethesda and Valve want money, I in turn will want to see things fixed...and modders simply are not being paid enough to mod full time. The Steam Workshop will also never remove mods people have downloaded...once people have bought them, they will continue to provide access, regardless of the modder's desires.

Add into this that, from a modding POV, the Steam Workshop is the worst option for modding (you have virtually no control over the mods when compared to a program like Mod Organizer) AND that this is likely a trial run for some terrible modding scheme in the run up to Fallout IV or TES VI....and well, you can see why people might be losing their shit. Oh. and even better - some modders are now putting in-game pop-ups into unpaid versions of their mods, to try and force people to buy the paid versions (I think this was Midas or Phendrix spells).

Notably, SkyUI, one of the most critical mods for Skyrim, has said they will only release future updates on a paid basis (and they've been sitting on an update for over a year at this point). Chesko, the noted creator of Frostfall (among others) has run into legal and ethical issues and basically deleted his entire social networking presence and Steam workshop portfolio. Apollodown, the creator of several hugely popular overhaul mods, has temporarily taken his mods down from Nexus in protest at SkyUI and Valve's connivance. Isoku, the creator of several popular immersion mods, who had been recently hyping updates to some of his more script heavy mods, was found to have been holding his mods back in preparation for the paid scheme and only releasing the updates on the Steam Workshop. He's since been forced to recant by public pressure, and state he will offer his mods on Steam first, then for free after 1-2 months on Nexus.

It's been a complete clusterfuck. The modding community used to be an actual community. People shared knowledge in the spirit of learning and enjoyment...now knowledge is going to be more jealously guarded, as today's novice may be tomorrow's competitor. And there is going to be a very real divide between the modders who keep their stuff free, and who choose to chatge from it.

I guarantee Valve has not run this past any lawyer who knows anything about copyright and video games. Their legal disclaimer is so poorly written I am sure I could argue against it, in a legal setting.

The vast, vast majority of mods are still free and available on Nexus, I should point out. A lot of top modders have affirmed their belief that mods should be freely available, including the authors of almost all the major overhaul mods. The STEP website has also said it will only approve and recommend free mods also.

Even with the whole SkyUI debacle, the current 4.1 build will remain free to use, as well.

Yeah, lets wait until E3 and Bethesda's "big announcement" before we get too excited.

Fallout IV or TES VI will be unveiled there, I'm 99% certain (and pretty certain its the former). Having learnt from this event, Bethesda will likely try to rig things from the start next time, instead of come in much later and try to take over. We will have to see how the next game goes.

Yeah, lets wait until E3 and Bethesda's "big announcement" before we get too excited.

Fallout IV or TES VI will be unveiled there, I'm 99% certain (and pretty certain its the former). Having learnt from this event, Bethesda will likely try to rig things from the start next time, instead of come in much later and try to take over. We will have to see how the next game goes.

This is going to be Starcraft 2 all over again, isn't it?Fucken broken by design products.

Incidentally, started playing Pillars of Eternity. Only about 3 hours in, but enjoying it so far. Its basically an updated Infinity Engine, but there's nothing wrong with that, it's what they advertised. I'm playing a character with reasonable Perception and Intelligence first time around, as well, which is offering some....interesting conversation choices. VA is a bit questionable in places, but I didn't really expect it to be amazing, nor was it advertised as such (I'm actually surprised there is even that much).

Interested in trying the Path of the Damned/Expert/Trial of Iron trifecta sometime. Maybe solo...will have to think about classes carefully if so, though.

I started Planescape: Torment a few weeks ago and was immediately blown away by the apparent depth and how much they didn't give a shit about making a fantasy game that was mainstream-friendly. I find it more immersive to play in vast, complicated, dense settings that I don't understand because that's basically the same as real life.

And then I got very quickly sidetracked by blowing my tax return on Bloodborne (and a PS4 to play it on). It's a stellar game in some respects, but it has some flaws that are hard to look past. Loading screen times are just one such flaw.

I would strongly recommend finishing Torment, when you get into the meat of what's going on it gets very, very good.

POE:

VA - Yes, it's often somewhat meh, but adds to flavour at various points later. I've blasted a quick run with companions to get a feel for them, I suppose I should warn you that one has massive spoilers if you don't have him along with you, it was quite a twist for me due to totally ignoring them.

The trifecta's been done by at least a few classes in a non-exploit way, so it's certainly possible. Personally, I don't have the paitence for such things. It's like "Hardcore" mode in Diabo, I get the point, even appreciate it but in games involving any kind of grind or constant combat it's just guaranteeing a smashed something at somepoint.

Incidentally, there's been a breakdown of the conversation options and paths and if you're not playing a cipher you get kinda fucked over. Seems a lot of plot-ish things got shoved into them. You'll see what I mean.

I'm a glutton for punishment tho, so that sort of thing suits me. I did a whole "single character" run of Baldurs Gate (1+2 and ToB) and it wasn't even a Mage/Kensai, favoured dual class of cheesemongers everywhere. Not Dead is Dead, though I am considering doing that for Skyrim, if I can setup streaming properly when I get my new graphics card (SkyRe for funsies, or Requiem for short streams).

And yeah, I've already noticed ciphers are getting some special treatment.

I can;t even imagine how dreary it would be to get up in the morning and think, "Ah fuck, I have to get the game up. Another day of playing that fucking game. I SHOULD be playing it right now, I'll get started right after I read the Wall Street Journal"

1) Any sequel to anything which has mod support will forever more just be 'that last game but with mods!'2) Having a character who has a family is something Bethesda should be ashamed of because it means they can't be gay. 3) Including tongue-in-cheek references to McCarthyism in a game set in a stylized 1950s world is worth getting angry about.4) The Witcher 3 has rendered Fallout obsolete because there were more models on the screen.5) Including the ability for NPCs to use 1000 pre-selected names in spoken dialogue is awful because they won't include names like 'Jemimah' or 'Epiphany' or 'Sir General Fuckwad 97'6) Programmers shouldn't be allowed to appear to have rehearsed their presentation - that makes it too 'Corporate'7) Crafting systems are literally the devil.8) Lack of mention for modders mean there is no respect at bethesda for modders.9) Fallout is now officially 'just another FPS'.10) I fucking hate internet comments.

1) Any sequel to anything which has mod support will forever more just be 'that last game but with mods!'2) Having a character who has a family is something Bethesda should be ashamed of because it means they can't be gay. 3) Including tongue-in-cheek references to McCarthyism in a game set in a stylized 1950s world is worth getting angry about.4) The Witcher 3 has rendered Fallout obsolete because there were more models on the screen.5) Including the ability for NPCs to use 1000 pre-selected names in spoken dialogue is awful because they won't include names like 'Jemimah' or 'Epiphany' or 'Sir General Fuckwad 97'6) Programmers shouldn't be allowed to appear to have rehearsed their presentation - that makes it too 'Corporate'7) Crafting systems are literally the devil.8) Lack of mention for modders mean there is no respect at bethesda for modders.9) Fallout is now officially 'just another FPS'.10) I fucking hate internet comments.

I can kinda agree with crafting, because Bethesda have always been fucking terrible at crafting. I mean, Morrowind allowed you to literally break the game with alchemy and/or enchantment (I had fortify intelligence and luck potions that lasted for several months...not game time, real time. Oh and 100% Chameleon Glass Armour) , and while Oblivion and Skyrim nerfed that considerably, they still didn't do a good job of balancing it.

And at least in Morrowind breaking the game was half the fun, because of enemies like Gaenor and that lich in Tribunal.

Yeah, I fully expect crafting to break the game - when I saw the huge list of customizable weapons you can just throw together at your shop I was just like 'yup, that's gonna make it trivial'. But... that's sorta the point in Bethesda RPGs in my experience. In Skyrim or in Fallout, God is the guy with the hammer.

Buuuut there's a lot of people talking about how letting you build buildings is going to make the game into a cheap Rust knockoff. I don't think that's fair - it sounds like they're trying to build on the Fallout 3 'invest in caravans' option to let you build up whole shanty towns.

At worst, it'll be a useless subsystem easily ignored - at best, modders will turn it into something truly awesome. I can't really see it as a downside.

I can't really follow the people who complain that the crafting will let you break the difficulty of the game. It's a bit premature to be saying that when the game has just now been shown. Even if it does turn out that you can break it, so what? Bethesda has never tried to save the player from themselves, more like the opposite. God mode is available from the start with nothing needed to enable it, community modding is something they make easy as hell, knowing full well that modders will make insanely overpowered weapons and armor... Even official patches and DLC often destroys balance, like with GRA.

Really, it comes off more like people looking for something in the game to bitch about in order to justify their own dislike of the series.

I'd be fine with them destroying balance if their games weren't so face-rolling easy in the first place. At least then I'd feel like I'd earn it.

Like, I mod Skyrim. A lot. To justify the kind of insane bonuses you get from smithing/enchanting/alchemy in the base game I find myself using a host of AI/combat mechanics improving/spawn increasing/outright unfair enemy enhancement mods. Which is great, because I love a challenge, but it would be nice if Bethesda had a vision of challenge that wasn't "herp derp increase incoming damage decrease outgoing damage" and "grind moar".

But I am a filthy elitist when it comes to difficulty, which I will acknowledge, and I accept my vision of challenge wont be accepted by everyone. But even if it were an optional setting, that would be something.

When it comes to being challenged in combat I like Mount & Blade: Warband. There are a lot of options you can set to make it as hard as you want to.(http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/e/e6/Mount%26Blade_options.jpg)Especially controlling attack and block directions manually and setting damage to player at least at normal makes for very fun battles.

The combat is great, the tactical element in battles is damn good though some mods really help the UI.Other that that it can be a bit slow though.

You'll love the political elements, kingdoms with lords, each has relatives that may or may not be lords and ladies in the same kingdom, each has a different opinion of their king. Several lords are sexist as fuck and the easiest way to gain fame is to play as a woman and challenge every sexist to combat and beating them up. Soon they will all fear you enough to stop insulting you. The loyalties are complex and constantly changing.

Or you could go the capitalist route stay neutral and just trade and produce until you own factories in every city.

I usually start out playing as a gladiator, the money isn't that great but it makes you very good at fighting and winning tournaments can make you extremely rich. Also, gladiators don't need armies meaning you move very fast over the map and can avoid almost every fight. not having armies also keeps your overhead low. It could be worth it to get a small amount of mounted friends as bodyguards. Fighting against an army on your own is practically impossible on easy settings, let alone on realistic/fun settings.

I've got good money on it being pretty fucking good. Excellent, once the modders have been playing for a couple of months. Spectacular if someone pulls together another Game of thrones mod. The Clash of Kings mod for warband was fucking awesome.

I've been busy testing the latest iteration of Morrowloot (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/66105/?). Since this basically turns Skyrim into an extremely dangerous scavenger hunt, it's a lot of testing.

On the plus side, it is fairly fun. Scored an ebony sword at level 17, which is pretty damn good, even if the fight to get it was really scary :( (King Olaf One-Eye as a Draugr Deathlord when you're level 17 is no bueno...and with the ebony weapon buff, also means a OHK for him against my character).

Still looking for decent armour, however. I did manage to kill the Old Orc (who had an ebony battleaxe and full orcish armour) but I'm using light armour, so that doesn't work for me. Might have to go find a Thalmor patrol...Thieves Guild armour just isn't cutting it.

All in all it seems good so far. And if you use the suggested mods on the page, it actually does feel quite a bit like Requiem. You never have enough cash and everything's expensive and enemies are scary and higher level than you and at low levels your best option is pretty much hit and run or abuse poor pathfinding. On the plus side, when you get decent stuff...it's very decent indeed. Ebony sword wrecks even without smithing, and if you use Improved Artifacts, guild quest items are actually properly powerful and unique. Oh, and levelling speed is halved, which alongside the smithing nerf makes power levelling much more difficult. I'm also using Frostfall, Realistic Room Rental and iNeed, so I have additional money sinks too, but they're probably not necessary if you use Trade and Barter for an appropriately harsh economy (I'm using that too, but I have thievery and Become a Bard for living expenses).

Though I'll admit I'm waiting for Skywind to be released, because it has dated quite badly in terms of playability and UI.

Morrowloot basically delevels loot like Morrowind, so instead of upon getting to level 45 everyone has ebony weapons and you're finding daedric loot in every boss chest, items are handplaced into the world space regardless of level. So bandits will only rarely carry anything above steel, and nothing above orcish/scale (for bandit bosses). Elven and dwarven weapons and armour are only available on Thalmor patrols or in dwemer ruins, as well as on occasional bandit chiefs or in boss chests. Glass and Ebony items are all handplaced in the world and will only be found on major faction leaders or bosses. Orcs have Orcish armour. Dunmer wear Chitin, Bonemold or Glass. Daedric items are truly legendary, with only a single set existing in game, unless you craft it yourself (and additional restrictions are placed on that. Namely, night time, Skyforge and completion of a certain quest). Basically, if you want better tier material, you're going to have to go into (logically) dangerous places and fight things for it.

This iteration of Morrowloot is a bit better than previous ones, because it also delevels the encounter zones, meaning you can face very tough enemies early on. It also nerfs smithing improvements and gives additional damage to higher tier weapons, so you wont feel gimped when you find an ebony blade but can improve a steel weapon to do the same damage. Armour is similarly improved. Potions cannot be spammed, each one overwrites the effect of the previous one, and they have an effect over time. And this mod was made with compatibility in mind...it's easy to ruin Morrowloot's sense of balance by installing something like Immersive Weapons or Armour which will reintroduce levelled loot.

Oh and it reintroduces some specific items from earlier games. So far I've only found the Sanguine Amulet of Smithing, but the entire Sanguine set from Morrowind is around...somewhere.

Though I'll admit I'm waiting for Skywind to be released, because it has dated quite badly in terms of playability and UI.

Morrowloot basically delevels loot like Morrowind, so instead of upon getting to level 45 everyone has ebony weapons and you're finding daedric loot in every boss chest, items are handplaced into the world space regardless of level. So bandits will only rarely carry anything above steel, and nothing above orcish/scale (for bandit bosses). Elven and dwarven weapons and armour are only available on Thalmor patrols or in dwemer ruins, as well as on occasional bandit chiefs or in boss chests. Glass and Ebony items are all handplaced in the world and will only be found on major faction leaders or bosses. Orcs have Orcish armour. Dunmer wear Chitin, Bonemold or Glass. Daedric items are truly legendary, with only a single set existing in game, unless you craft it yourself (and additional restrictions are placed on that. Namely, night time, Skyforge and completion of a certain quest). Basically, if you want better tier material, you're going to have to go into (logically) dangerous places and fight things for it.

This iteration of Morrowloot is a bit better than previous ones, because it also delevels the encounter zones, meaning you can face very tough enemies early on. It also nerfs smithing improvements and gives additional damage to higher tier weapons, so you wont feel gimped when you find an ebony blade but can improve a steel weapon to do the same damage. Armour is similarly improved. Potions cannot be spammed, each one overwrites the effect of the previous one, and they have an effect over time. And this mod was made with compatibility in mind...it's easy to ruin Morrowloot's sense of balance by installing something like Immersive Weapons or Armour which will reintroduce levelled loot.

Oh and it reintroduces some specific items from earlier games. So far I've only found the Sanguine Amulet of Smithing, but the entire Sanguine set from Morrowind is around...somewhere.

That sounds very good, I might have to start playing again.It would make challenging areas actually feel challenging, so that alone would make me happy. For me that is essential for immersion.

Said mod is fully compatible with Duel, Combat Evolved, Deadly Dragons, Dragon Combat Overhaul, Skyrim Immersive Creatures and Revenge of the Enemies (patchs included in download, check the folder). Along with Frostfall and iNeed there is a very significant element of danger.

I also used Disparity so my character is somewhat weaker, in some aspects, than they would otherwise be (Disparity gives bonuses for your class and race specializations...but everything else is set to 5, skill wise. Lower carrying weight and starting stats too)

So I also totally missed that Dishonored 2 is in production. Emily Kaldwin as protagonist isn't surprising, but I do approve. Female no-choice protagonist is something I can get behind, given how many games will only offer a female character if it's optional (or just never give the option in the first place).

I'm actually more interested in her then Corvo. I hope she will have dialogue. I found it oddly off putting and kind of killed my immersion that corvo was mute.

I really liked dishonoured but I didn't think the game shone as one of the best games I had played until I played the DLC packs. Michael Maddson is a great voice actor and Daud did a lot to build the world for me.

Yeah, totally. The core game was a pretty competent stealth/roguelike game...far more so than other popular alternatives that put out a game every year and have pretty much abandoned the idea of stealth altogether, but Maddson as Daud was really very good, and his interaction with the seedier side of Dunwall definitely helped the setting come to life.

New setting could be interesting, too. We don't know much about Karnaca, except that it's in the south of the Empire. I honestly thought they might be taking it to Tyvia, for all it was talked about in the first game.

Though Sarevok is dead and his plan for war averted, peace eludes the citizens of Baldur's Gate. A crusade marches from the north, seizing supplies, forcing locals into military service, and disrupting trade along the Sword Coast. A charismatic warrior known as the Shining Lady leads this army, her background shrouded in mystery. Can the rumors be true—is she, like you, the child of a god?

The closer you get to the Shining Lady, the more you realize your father, the dead Lord of Murder still casts a long shadow upon your path. Baldur's Gate has put its faith in you, but you must determine whose interests you truly serve before you face the Shining Lady among the ruins of Dragonspear Castle...

Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear adds a new chapter to the Bhaalspawn saga. The events occurring between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II are at last revealed in this 25-hour expansion pack for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

25 hour expansion pack is not to be sneezed at. For sake of comparison, that's longer than the stated play time of all the Mass Effect 3 DLC put together.

From what I can recall of Forgotten Realms lore, Dragonspear was a favoured target of the city of Baldur's Gate, mostly because the Zhentarim kept opening portals to the Nine Hells there. Reasonably enough, the Grand Dukes didn't want the Blood War spilling out into the western heartlands. And tunnels connected it to the Underdark. So demons, undead, Zhents and possibly drow are potential enemies, alongside the hordes of monsters which infest the High Moor. And maybe another Bhaalspawn. Because they've all proven pretty stable in previous games.

I'll probably look at it, but I'm not going in with high hopes. The additional content in the EE versions I've played so far has ranged from "fits in seamlessly" to "horribly jarring and out of place".

This is their first real attempt at their own tale with relatively few props. Do well here and they're set for the next 5-10 years with remakes, interquels and sequels.

I wasnt a big fan of the Black Pits, and thought the new characters were mostly unnecessary, given modders can and have been doing better with new party members for years. But Chris Avellone, former Black Isle writer for Baldur's Gate/current Obsidian employee/creative lead for Pillars of Eternity, appears to endorse it.

Also based on the screenshots, it looks like they might be taking advantage of the age of the IE engine and greater computer processing power to produce bigger battles. That would be nice, if it were the case.

I just finished Metal Gear V (for real this time as opposed to the first two fake outs) and it was a complete headfuck, as metal gear dramatic twists go its actually pretty downplayed, still not sure what to make of it.

Windows 10 put Candy Crush Saga on my computer, so I played it because I had nothing better to do at the time.

I wanted to kill everyone ever in the whole world, starting with myself, who ever thought playing the game woud be a good ideea. I felt this for every single second I played this fucktarded abortion of wasted programming space, which was about half an hour.

I just finished Metal Gear V (for real this time as opposed to the first two fake outs) and it was a complete headfuck, as metal gear dramatic twists go its actually pretty downplayed, still not sure what to make of it.

Thats the one, Hardened afgan/angola military game which occasionally shits all over itself with anime giant robots and objectification of women.

Funnily enough, very few of the characters have any kind of development arc or resolution, except for the sex appeal and the main character. Her ending is good and depressing, his ending is a little unbelievable but good and depressing. Decent and overly addictive gameplay. Really enjoyed it which was unexpected because the metal gear games can be really hit and miss.

Despite the yoga pants/bath towel sections, I have to say, if you're a fan of horror, that Until Dawn is pretty good.

I really can't say too much without spoiling the plot, but it's very story driven, multiple branching choices, QTEs for action. But the story...it's a pretty good story, more than good enough to make up for the uninspired gameplay aspects. Maybe pushing credibility in a couple of places, but taken in all together...yeah, I approve.

Despite the yoga pants/bath towel sections, I have to say, if you're a fan of horror, that Until Dawn is pretty good.

I really can't say too much without spoiling the plot, but it's very story driven, multiple branching choices, QTEs for action. But the story...it's a pretty good story, more than good enough to make up for the uninspired gameplay aspects. Maybe pushing credibility in a couple of places, but taken in all together...yeah, I approve.

I've been watching a playthrough, I'm actually quite impressed with it. Might be enough to make me spend money (as opposed to spending my money on used copies of Silent Hill 2 & 3, because I'm on a weird Silent Hill kick and the HD Collection is shit on a stick)

Modding morrowind has become trickier over the years because not all mods have worked with updates, new os's etc. and its not always clear which mod will or wont work. The communities are pretty helpful though.

Those remakes were a goddamn mess. My old ps2 silent hill 2 copy still gets a play through once every year or so. Its still one of my favourite games of all time.

I'd heard so much about it, I finally caved and bought a copy of SH2 for my (thankfully still functional) PS2. 100% worth the experience. Now I'm gonna get the Greatest Hits edition and a copy of 3, because I'm a turbo-nerd.

I think one of the reasons 2 works so damn well is that, really, it's a tragedy wrapped in a thick horror blanket. The other classic games, from what I know about them, are more straight horror.

OK, just want some feedback on visual quality here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmSDS3Rt6EM&feature=youtu.be). For some reason, I cannot use OBS to do recordings, and Shadowplay, as wonderful as it is, uses a variable framerate which desyncs the audio. So I'm trying out recording with fraps as the alternative.

Invisibility is OP, but it's actually less cheap than my preferred method of combat - Shroudwalk - Hidden Cobra - Vanish. Basically the first gives you 90 seconds of invisibility, which you can break and regain up to five times. The second causes an enemy's health to drop to 1 upon leaving combat. The third causes enemies to leave combat. Basically, the Apocalypse Spell package is dirty as fuck at the high levels, especially for illusion. I'm also auto-casting Dragonskin, Sword and Sorcery (25% extra weapon and spell damage when wielding one in each hand) and Cloak of Souls (AoE soul trap) whenever I enter combat, thanks to Ocato's Recital. And with SkyRe's changes to Illusion spells, I can just use invisibility - mayhem and never actually do any fighting myself ever again, because Illusion spells are effectively not level capped anymore.

As for leaving behind good stuff...there is even better stuff below. Namely, geode veins. I'm at the point of that game where enchantments matter more than anything else, and having hundreds of soul gems will benefit that much more than ebony and glass weapons. I also have Wintermyst installed, so getting OP at enchanting would effectively seal my character's ascension into godhood.

Incidentally, I also went on a selling spreee when I returned. Went from 70k gold to 250k gold in about 10 days.

OK, just want some feedback on visual quality here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmSDS3Rt6EM&feature=youtu.be). For some reason, I cannot use OBS to do recordings, and Shadowplay, as wonderful as it is, uses a variable framerate which desyncs the audio. So I'm trying out recording with fraps as the alternative.

Quick verdict on Star Wars: Battlefront based on the beta = Battlefield 4 with jetpacks. No surprise, since it is made by EA Dice. Frostbite engine, so looks good, destructible cover, large maps and lots of players. Not much more to say about it, really.

I'm still testing, but another video for your enjoyment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzfJ6M2QS1o). This is me playing the Requiem overhaul, possibly the most hardcore and unforgiving of the Skyrim overhauls, at least at the low level. I'm trying to clear Embershard Mine, the newbie starter mine after you start the game proper, and getting my arse handed to me.

For its flaws, of which there are a few, I like Requiem. I'm basically testing mods and load orders at the moment, so I'm getting closer to making my selections and starting a proper recording.

1. Right off the bat I said, okay i WILL NOT HORDE. Now i HAVE TO hoard because of scrapping. Meanwhile, I have Cobbsworth making little snide comments "resorting to hording, are we?!" It's like, listen asshole i have a PROBLEM.

2. The crafting sucks...that is until i got used to it. It still feels very baseline though. If modders can enhance this aspect, this will make me a very happy minuteman.

3. a good bit of it feels half-done, i think. but then i'm still in the upper corner of the map and haven't even ventured into diamond city yet.

4. The power armor part is pretty fun, imo. It adds a bit of dimension to the game. I think the ability to craft and, once alllll that's over with, adds to that dimension as well.

I picked it up Sunday and spent about four hours OCD clearing fallen branches and broken stuff out of the settlement. I really hope you can make some prettier houses later as well cause wooden/metal shacks kind of suck.

I assumed those were for the peons. Kinda like in Skyrim, how I make a thousand shitty iron daggers, then craft a legendary daedric broadsword for myself. Once I level up my crafting skill, I'm going to make a McMansion.

I'd also like to point out, despite whining in certain corners, melee on survival is completely viable. Viable enough to kill a Mirelurk Queen, anyway.

Its the same people said melee wasn't viable in the previous games. I mean sure you're not going to be taking down a death claw in early game, but it will ultimately be doable (even if it will result in burning through health items).

Holy shit, I didn't realise the crafted versions of the same drugs stack perks (buff, bufftats etc). That... is kind of game breaking.I couldn't tell from the video but it must only have been one or two hits to kill her.

I made a shitty thing to generate character names for Skyrim: http://tesname.herokuapp.com/It's on a free-tier webserver so goes to sleep while nobody is using it and takes a while to wake up when you first visit the page.

Some dude on Reddit broke all the character names in TES into reusable components to generate lore-friendly names with. This smashes them back together randomly.

I didn't add a button to clear the generated names from the screen, even though it would take literally two minutes, so for now the only way to tidy up the page is to switch your race selection then switch it back. Edit: Okay, it took less than a minute so I added it.

Almost as important, It's Happening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpTy5CbuLzI) (in 6 months). Awake: The Rise of Mannimarco has a definitive release date. Based on what the team have said, the mod's already in a pretty playable state, but they want to polish the shit out of it and do extensive playtesting before release.

Little is known of the mod details, except you need to have completed one major questline (guild, Dawnguard or main), be above level 30 and have done A Knife In the Dark for the mod to activate. It's designed as a DLC sized mod, and while we've had previous bad experience with mods claiming to be such (cough cough Summerset Isle cough cough RGX cough cough), the quality of the modding team is such that I expect good things. The option to side with, as well as oppose Mannimarco will exist.

I also like this on a conceptual level. It's like the devs for Skyrim were all "lets make the main bad guy a necromancer dragon" without remembering that, you know, there was an actual necromancer in the game lore who had achieved godhood. And then they made a DLC all about vampires. And made a good 50% of the enemies who weren't a) dragons b) bandits or c) falmer be undead. Of course, there was a Mannimarco in Oblivion, but he was just the lame mortal version. If someone's mucking around bringing dragons back to life, it's probably going to grab the attention of the greatest necromancer who ever lived. Even notable idiots Potema and Malkoran tried to take advantage of the civil war to raise undead armies, and that was before we knew dragons were coming back to life. So on that level, it makes a sort of sense.

Also the guest appearance of "Richard", aka the Youtuber and mod-maker "Gopher" as his own playthrough character is a nice touch.

You know how all Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are filled with random junk items that aren't even worth their weight as vendor trash?

Well, now they're worth something. Just about every piece of garbage littering the wasteland is worth something as scrap material. You use this scrap to build equipment mods and stuff for the settlements you conquer benevolently aid.

I am the King of Trash Town. Look upon my pile of repurposed garbage, ye mighty, and despair.

No kidding. I started playing, only for a (relatively) short time the other day, and I know my hoarding instincts are going to start kicking in.

With the beds they ask you to build initially, I made them fit fairly neatly in one of the broken down houses, but my impulse to tear up all the junk and make everything look nice and new is strong. While it is a neat addition, I can't let myself get caught up in hoarding and building forever.

Already I'm lugging around a bunch of armor and crap I don't need but rather sell for caps than repurpose into materials at the moment. No traders anywhere! (Yet, I've only gone to Concord and back). The fact that I can no longer use my dog as a pack mule will make it tougher as well.

I seem to recall another group were trying to do this, but they were having significant problems in that only the host would be able to turn in quests and similar. Not surprising, really, given this is the same engine that Morrowind is run off. It's simply not made for multiplayer.

Also, there is this big online multiplayer game called Elder Scrolls Online, which is actually pretty good now and kinda fun. For an MMO, it's surprisingly single player friendly, though admittedly the endgame and PvP are not casual experiences.

I am gonna reinstall it and give it another go. If anyone has it and wants to team up, let me know.

Unfortunately I'm a PC player, otherwise I'd gladly do so.

Now's probably a good time to roll a nightblade if you haven't already - the Thieves Guild DLC just dropped, with the Dark Brotherhood slated for the summer. I think the meta after the last balance patch is that magicka nightblades and dragonknights are pretty awesome, at least for PvE.

For the first time in years, I have a gaming rig. Skyrim is downloaded, modding best practice is being researched.

I would look at the STEP guides. http://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.2.9.2

You don't have to follow everything they say, I think they go overboard on the eye candy (and that Immersive Citizens is far too buggy), but they will show you how to use modding programs, fix errors and give you ideas of what kind of mods you might want to have.

Trickiest thing so far was debugging ENBoost crash after Bethesda logo which turned out to be my needing DirectX 9 components I didn't have. Now I'm figuring out what's causing my brawls to break and whether the patch fixes them. Ah, this is exactly how I remember modding.

With Requiem, most of those are going to need patches. Specifically the Dragonborn DLC ("NRM Dragonborn patch"), Campfire, Frostfall, Immersive Armors, Alternate Start ("Another Requiem Patch Central") and Hunterborn (built in FOMOD patch). Hunterborn and Campfire also have a compatibility patch of their own.

If you're using Mod Organiser, make sure on the Archive tab that Brawl Bugs is actually checked - MO occasionally unchecks it, which is fun (also other archives too).

Oh yeah, I took out the standard things at the top, including Legendary Patch. I originally had all three unofficial patches, then used TES5Edit USLEEP script to replace them and am still figuring out how to tidy up after that change.

Necromancer was one of the first alternate starts I chose. I probably should have seen it coming, tbh.

There needs to be a "welcome to Requiem" death screen, a la Dark Souls.

It could be worse - the old Azirok Dragonborn Patch used to balance Solstheim around a level 50 battlemage. Getting an alternate start there was a death sentence. People have actually escaped Blackreach, by contrast....

I've been buggering about with Cities:Skylines. Also known as "The game Sim-city should have been" It's probably the best example of a city builder that I've seen in years. Very open to mods and general tinkering, decent community churning out content to the point where it's almost overwhelming. The traffic management can be a bit of a fucker but it actually works very well as part of the game design. Poor and hasty planning is it's own punishment and even the best plans need eventual redesigns to cope with increased or unexpected volume.

I think there's still a few bugs that need to get sorted out but certainly nothing that important or game breaking. The International Airport in the city of 700K people dealing with 15-20 people a week is...odd.

Highly recommended. It's recently had a second expansion that I've not touched yet so I'd guess there will be a bulk deal in a few months for the lot.

That does sound like Requiem at work. Mage = arrow to the face experience. Warrior = magic to the face experience. Rogue = all your sneak attacks failing because ROBOTS AND UNDEAD AND ALIENS DON'T HAVE DISCERNIBLE ANATOMY and then getting rekt experience.

That does sound like Requiem at work. Mage = arrow to the face experience. Warrior = magic to the face experience. Rogue = all your sneak attacks failing because ROBOTS AND UNDEAD AND ALIENS DON'T HAVE DISCERNIBLE ANATOMY and then getting rekt experience.

Heavy armour seems awesome...until you're hunting bandits and they're all in light armour and they just outrun you :(

The Orc Stronghold is pretty much the best alternate start in Requiem (second being a property owner in Markarth = Dwemer weapons + cash), but to be honest, clearing out the bandits in Whiterun Hold will usually net you steel plate or orcish armour very early on.

Unless someone else has already done it, I'm going to need to put together a simple Campfire/Alternate Start patch because it pisses me off that I start next to a vanilla static campfire and immediately have to build a new Campfire grade campfire to do campfire things on.

Bears in Requiem do have a warning distance (they had one in vanilla too, but it was never properly implemented). So long as you don't threaten it by drawing a weapon or moving closer in its threat zone, it should just stroll on by.

Sabre cats, now...that's a different story. They will be actively stalking you through all that grass. They have a delightful knockdown attack, btw.

Bears in Requiem do have a warning distance (they had one in vanilla too, but it was never properly implemented). So long as you don't threaten it by drawing a weapon or moving closer in its threat zone, it should just stroll on by.

Sabre cats, now...that's a different story. They will be actively stalking you through all that grass. They have a delightful knockdown attack, btw.

Funny story: just before quitting I turned away from that bear and there was a dead Sabre Cat behind me. Following Faldrus from Rorikstead to Whiterun paid off as a survival strategy.

My spellblade in my Requiem videos keeps following Thalmor and Imperial patrols around the place. It's a viable strategy. In fact, check out a mod called "Immersive Patrols", it can lead to some interesting situations (Whiterun guard patrol at Valtheim Towers).

I'm currently grinding smithing in Requiem, which is a hell of a chore. At least until I could smith jewellry. Now it's amazing. I pay for smithing training from Balimund to make jewellry. I sell the jewellry to a shopkeeper. I steal everything in the shopkeeper's stock chest at 3am (100 lockpicking), including all his money and my jewels. I sell it all to Tonilia. I pay for smithing training...By the time I've rotated around Skyrim, the original merchant's inventory and gold has respawned.

All I need is to locate the ebony smithing book, get my enchanting up to 50 and I shall have ABSOLUTE POWER. And by absolute power, I mean a daedric crossbow with explosive enchants. Once I have that, I think my illusionist/archer/assassin can take on the main quest and Dawnguard.

I've been playing some No Man's Sky since it launched. I've got probably 15-20 hours logged now.

For all the complaining people online are doing about it (nothing new there) I am having a blast. It's definitely not something to play if you're looking for nonstop action, meaty plot or a high skill-ceiling.

If you want to just chill and zoom around a universe, exploring planets and making up your own journey then it's pretty good. There is a form of levelling system in the game but it's kind of disguised as 'milestones'.

I will admit that the creatures and planets do end up looking kind of same-y a lot of the time but I guess with 'infinite' possibilities the reality is that you end up somewhere in the centre of the distribution most of the time. I've found enough cool-looking things so far to give me hope that there are more out there to find.

I am also enjoying the heck out of No Man's Sky. It's a super-mellow experience.

In the unlikely event you ever find the Robert Anton Wilson star system, look for planet Prometheus Rising. The sentinels there are unaggressive, and there are loads of minerals -- huge, abundant pillars of them -- just waiting to be mined.

Rust is getting slightly more fun as I figure it out. Still not sure if it's for me, though.

Have you tried 'the Stanley parable' (it may be called something similar)

In an unrelated note, cities skylines is about the best simcity type game I've ever encountered. Strongly recommended.

Hoping for a firm date for mount and blade bannerlord soon. The siege mechanics look hilarious and the modding community is pretty solid. High expectations, and even if not met will be remedied by the community in short order.

Rust is getting slightly more fun as I figure it out. Still not sure if it's for me, though.

Have you tried 'the Stanley parable' (it may be called something similar)

In an unrelated note, cities skylines is about the best simcity type game I've ever encountered. Strongly recommended.

Hoping for a firm date for mount and blade bannerlord soon. The siege mechanics look hilarious and the modding community is pretty solid. High expectations, and even if not met will be remedied by the community in short order.

From the sounds of it, it's a combination of the positive reception Daud got, as well as having a choice of two different characters for the main game and wanting them to reflect differently on the events as they occur. So Emily doesn't just have different powers to Corvo, she also has different opinions and commentary on things. Increasing replay value is always good.

Edit: apparently it was always planned for Corvo to be voiced in the original, but they left it until far too late in development to do it. Don't know about that...sounds like bad planning.

"Low chaos" is the canon ending for the game and the DLCs, right? They've not said much about Daud at all, but I figure if Delilah is back, Daud has to figure into this somewhere. Probably as DLC again, is my guess, though it would've been nice to have him as a main character option.

Bethesda released their Creative Kills video for Dishonored 2 the other day as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrBJom2VZis

Emily's Domino skill is so damn dirty. When I saw the E3 gameplay demo, I have to say the potential of that power was pretty exciting to me. Seems like there's almost no limit to the kind of status effects you can link onto people, push, stun grenades and kills with blades all seem to work just as well.

It appears they've also revamped non-lethal to make it a bit easier and more viable. The talent trees will apparently have nonlethal options built into them.

Bethesda released their Creative Kills video for Dishonored 2 the other day as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrBJom2VZis

Emily's Domino skill is so damn dirty. When I saw the E3 gameplay demo, I have to say the potential of that power was pretty exciting to me. Seems like there's almost no limit to the kind of status effects you can link onto people, push, stun grenades and kills with blades all seem to work just as well.

It appears they've also revamped non-lethal to make it a bit easier and more viable. The talent trees will apparently have nonlethal options built into them.

I forget were I saw it, but somewhere I think it was stated that Emily has more crowd control abilities because she's royalty and such abilities are thematic for her. Which raises odd questions about why Corvo has the power to eat rats and also summon them to eat people.

I got to the second sub-boss, the Seer, slowly ticking him down with DoTs while my meleers hacked through his protective rows. He's down to the last few hits, but then wipes three of my party members and leaves my Hellion on Death's Door with a debuff. He's two hits away but without healing she won't make it. Fuck it, I hit him with the glaive, have a freak crit and kill him. I practically jump for joy, then I remember those other three party members are permadead and there's no save scumming to try for a better result.

For her success, I rewarded my Hellion with a week of flagellation to reduce stress. Luckily I think I can dive right back in because my Crusader just got his syphilis cured.

Anyone bothered with the latest Deus Ex? The brief review is more of the same, including janky plot. Nothing particularly of note outside of a couple of design decisions like "pick ONE quest to marginally influence your ending cut scene and options" Ends up feeling like an open world game out of spite, not because it wants to be.

Bannerlord is at "advertise on steam" point now, which is promising.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/261550

A couple of years of mods here should see some awesome shit. The siege gameplay (second video) cries out for multiplayer.

Deus Ex is beautiful, long, but with very little story progression in the main story. The side quests are way more interesting and well written than the main game. I really enjoyed it, but the lack anything other then a very bare bones story means that it lacks any kind of dramatic punch when it comes to an unfinished end. If they had treated the main story as just another one of the side quests and have no overarching plot other then Prague + Investigations, it would have felt far more satisfying and possibly have been commended for world building story instead of what it gave.

The narrative has been getting progressively weaker from the original Deus Ex (one of the best examples of story telling in games) which is still one of the most organic feeling stories that can be directly shaped by the player without feeling interrupted from the flow of the game. This latest one is heavy on expository dialogue, heavy handed use of Augs as a stand in for any other persecuted minority (even having that misguided augs lives matter trailer).Even with that, it's still one of the best games of the last few years and even if you played it to do nothing more then break into apartments, shops and buildings in Prague, its a visually striking and fun experience (even if a bit dumb).

I have a decent, mid-range desktop (GTX 980, 16 gig ram, AMD FX 6350 processor) and I was getting 20-35 FPS on a mixture of low and very low settings. I played around with the Nvidia settings abit, and I'm better now, 40ish FPS on middle settings, but it's still quite choppy and with some graphical tearing.

I also have to run it in windowed mode, or the game crashes on the main loading screen. Which takes hideously long to load, btw.

All in all, it's a real shame, because otherwise the game is good fun to play. I'm doing a Corvo low chaos playthrough, and though I'm skipping some of the levels a bit fast (to progress the story), and I'm liking it. Enemies seem a bit smarter, a bit more attuned to their environment. Verticality is definitely a thing. And the non-lethal options are pretty awesome...you no longer have to be a master of stealth to keep your hands clean. Clockwork Mansion mission was a bit messy, but otherwise I've had no problem only neutralizing the target and getting away clean (a bunch of guards following me through a rewired wall of light at the start of the mission did not help).

My day-early super-fancy preorder of Dishonored 2 got delayed to Tuesday because Amazon is farts. But I got to play the Clockwork Mansion level a few times over a month early at one of their promotional events, so my saltiness is slightly alleviated. Speaking of, did Bethesda just spill a giant bag of marketing money on this game and be like, "go nuts, guys"? They've done all kinds of promotional events and stuff this past year.

From the sound of it, Bethesda are not exactly hurting for money. Competent QA people to iron out bugs, yes, but not money. I mean, consider that Skyrim was one of the most successful video games of all time, and yet Bethesda haven't even started on Elder Scrolls VI.

Even though I'm not interested in the story at all at this point, Mass Effect: Andromeda does seem to have some slick looking combat. That's one area Bioware has improved on, game after game, and Vanguard gameplay finally looks as awesome as it should be (https://youtu.be/NOIzH6UcoW4?t=153).

Just FYI, Soldier is probably the worst class to play Mass Effect 1 with. IMO it's pretty boring. Adept is good, though massively OP. Any class with Pistols will work though, because you put all your points into it, get one of those Spectre X Pistols, get two heat sinks and you can spam bullets as fast as possible with no chance of overheating.

On the other end of things, you can take a powerful sniper rifle, explosive rounds X and a high velocity barrel...you only get one shot, but it's a shot which will kill a Reaper itself, especially on an Infiltrator using Assassination.

Speaking of Bioware games, I finally got around to doing what I've wanted to do since I saw the skillset, and created a 2 handed weapon Champion in Dragon Age Inquisition.

It just makes sense....sword and shield is survivable enough, except perhaps on Nightmare with all the Trials running, so using the Champion skillset, which basically makes you unkillable, doesn't make sense. With two handed though, you offset the weakness of that playstyle (building up enough guard) and play off the Champion's strength (To The Death with a Champion built for critical damage can easily net you 5k damage, and that's without using fade-touched gear with Hidden Blades or Walking Bomb).

It also allows you to do crazy shit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5X2bOz64Q8

Next experiment: trying Sword and Shield Reaver, to see if it can add to S+S DPS.

Tried a high chaos, stealth, Mostly Flesh and Steel run of Dishonored 2 as Emily Kaldwin. Quite a different experience of the game, without powers to solve every problem. And of course, since I was aiming for stealth (not complete ghost runs, though I got a couple of them), I couldn't just gun down problems either.

It was satisfying though, taking down witches and Clockwork Soldiers and Duke Luka Abele and Delilah without resorting to the Outsider's cheap tricks. All crossbow, grenades, stun mines and sword, all the way. And all those collected runes should set me up nicely for a NG+ (if it works that way).

Tried a high chaos, stealth, Mostly Flesh and Steel run of Dishonored 2 as Emily Kaldwin. Quite a different experience of the game, without powers to solve every problem. And of course, since I was aiming for stealth (not complete ghost runs, though I got a couple of them), I couldn't just gun down problems either.

It was satisfying though, taking down witches and Clockwork Soldiers and Duke Luka Abele and Delilah without resorting to the Outsider's cheap tricks. All crossbow, grenades, stun mines and sword, all the way. And all those collected runes should set me up nicely for a NG+ (if it works that way).

I think it does. I finished my campaign as Emily, then started NG+ as Corvo and then suddenly had 49 runes in my pockets after getting the option to buy abilities.

I am too cowardly to play Flesh & Steel mode, but I think I'll get there one day because I like this game so damn much. Between the two characters, and the Low/High/Very High Chaos paths, there's a lot of potential for replay.

Oh, I meant specifically importing from a Flesh and Steel playthrough. My murderous Emily gathered more runes and schematics than my first playthrough did, so I wondered if they also transferred over, as runes are converted into 200 coins when grab them.

Turns out, they are not transferred over from a Flesh and Steel import. Oh well. To be honest, I didn't find it that hard, as I wasn't aiming for Ghost or Clean Hands. The only power I absolutely and frequently missed was Blink/Far Reach. And it's a good way to unlock Well Funded as well, with the bonus cash from runes. Bonus cash which went to upgrading all my shit, so when I was inevitably found, I could usually kill fast enough that it didn't matter - Emily's final tier gun upgrade, The Insistent Gentleman, is amazing when your back is to a wall. And Long Distance Lover, the final crossbow upgrade, is just cheesy - perfect aim when using a spyglass. You can eliminate enemies from the other side of the map before they ever see you.

Normally I'm not one for first person shooters, but the new Doom was amazing.

For a series that doesn't have any real story, the newest one has a great set of histories of the angry shooty doom guy... told from the perspective of the demons of hell, terrified of him. It covers the first three doom games, of how every time hell recovered he would stomp in again and ruin everything for them. It's not the Inferno or Paradise lost, but it's eerily similar.

Quote

And in his conquest against the blackened souls of the doomed, his prowess was shown. In his crusade, the seraphim bestowed upon him terrible power and speed, and with his might he crushed the obsidian pillars of the Blood Temples. He set forth without pity upon the beasts of the nine circles. Unbreakable, incorruptible, unyielding, the Doom Slayer sought to end the dominion of the dark realm.

I heard very good things about the new Doom. I'm not entirely surprised though, id Software are pretty damn good at what they do, and John Carmack definitely knows a thing or two about first person shooters, to put it mildly. What's more amazing to my mind is that he was at the cutting edge in the early 90s, and he's somehow stayed there right up to the present and his work with Oculus Rift. Pretty impressive, has to be said.

I'm waiting for the final DLC for DS III to hit in March. Not really because I'm eagerly awaiting but more like, I just want to be done with Dark Souls. 3 is barely over all better than 2, and that is mostly because of the space and art. Stupid fucking poise being garbage and armor being relatively garbage.

I heard very good things about the new Doom. I'm not entirely surprised though, id Software are pretty damn good at what they do, and John Carmack definitely knows a thing or two about first person shooters, to put it mildly. What's more amazing to my mind is that he was at the cutting edge in the early 90s, and he's somehow stayed there right up to the present and his work with Oculus Rift. Pretty impressive, has to be said.

It's my understanding that the new DOOM has little to nothing new from Carmack in it, since he jumped ship shortly after they did another complete reboot of development to join the Oculus team. I don't have any solid sources on this, just scuttlebutt in the development industry says DOOM 2016 is not his work for the most part.

id Software also hasn't been very relevant since Doom 3. Doom 3 BFG was unsuccessful, Quake Live had limited outreach, and DOOM 4 was in development hell for years. Almost all their "decent" original people were fired between 01 and 04 except for Carmack. The work environment was also unhealthy as hell around that time, nigh on abusive, and (to hear the stories) has not improved. I worked for American McGee from 2013 to 2015 and got to hear the occasional angry rant about it.

But yes, Carmack himself is a great guy with a storied history. He helped me navigate some copyright stuff with Bethesda's lawyers at one point, so I can, legally speaking, use the concept of "slipgates" from Quake 1 in whatever I want, so long as the world is otherwise divorced from their IP. And he's definitely never been behind the curve technologically.

I've begun digging into the labyrinthine gaming mechanics madness that is Nioh. Beautiful game, runs like a 60fps dream, and while the Souls comparisons are inevitable it IS a significantly different game while still existing in whatever genre-space you want to consider Souls to be in.

Isn't Nioh the game where you play a weaboo that is, ironically, made by a Japanese company?

Incidentally, my next Morrowind playthrough, in 2020 or whenever, is going to be an Argonian n'wahaboo. He's going to join House Redoran and the Temple, refuse to use non-Dunmer weapons, ignore slavery and lawfully non-cooperate with Imperial authorities.

Dunmer Knight. I did an Imperial assassin/agent/nightblade scumbag last time around - Thieves Guild, House Hlaalu, Morag Tong. This time its Redoran, Temple, Fighter's Guild and Legion. Atronach sign, so I can abuse the shrines for free magicka refills.

Isn't Nioh the game where you play a weaboo that is, ironically, made by a Japanese company?

Incidentally, my next Morrowind playthrough, in 2020 or whenever, is going to be an Argonian n'wahaboo. He's going to join House Redoran and the Temple, refuse to use non-Dunmer weapons, ignore slavery and lawfully non-cooperate with Imperial authorities.

You start as a prisoner in the Tower of London who ends up in Japan and instantly learns the ways of the Samurai, Ninjutsu, and Onmyodo. Then you get your ass royally beaten by boss monsters until you git gud.

So what I'm hearing about Torment: Tides of Numeria is that while it's probably the best pen and paper inspired, isometric RPG out there at the moment...it's nowhere near as good as Planescape: Torment. The plot sounds hokey and uninspired, IMO, and you can crush the game by specialising into the right skills early on. It's also apparently unplayable on PS4.

I've heard similar things and it's not unexpected. The loss of the original setting and team members was always going to leave the end result up in the air and there were more than a few development problems.

The chances of recreating the ravel conversation/reveals for example were never high.

If any of you haven't played PS:T then be ashamed of yourselves. It's about 20 years old now and no other video game has come close to that level of plot. Seriously, try and name one.

Some of the reviews say the dialogue and conversation is actually quite good...which I would expect with Chris Avellone, but him being poached by Larian Studios probably didn't help with the overall level of quality. I might give it a try...will see more reviews from people before I decide though. Especially since I'm already committed to Andromeda (which I fully expect to have a terrible story, but to have at least decent combat and exploration gameplay) from the end of March.

I'd hang back for a bit yet, the general view of the writing seems to be "better than pillars of eternity, but not close to the original". And also "surprise, that's the end of the game". Considering the end of the first was so strong, it looks like it won't compare favourably against the points that made the original great to begin with.

In other news, tyranny is pretty solid and pillars 2 is funded by a kick starter clone. The first was solid despite a few problems, with any luck they'll drag avelone and zeits in and give them enough time to make the script shine. Currently scheduled for q1 18 so I expect this may not be possible though, suggests development has been going on for a while.

Also, re new torment, quite a few stretch goals dropped, the statement from the developer is a mea culpa but still, indicates bad planning and communication. Quite glad I didn't back /pre-order because I'd be a little pissed at them. Not necessarily for doing so, more for the lack of explanation until launch.

I still haven't finished Pillars of Eternity. I think I accidentally wandered into a high level quest and - through my superior knowledge of Infinity Engine tactics, ie; equip the party with missile weapons - crushed it, but can't finish the quest itself because the final fight is in the middle of a large, open room and I'm surrounded.

As far as I know, a bittering agent was added specifically so that tiny children (and presumably pets as well) would not be so quick to use their incredible powers of putting literally everything that isn't food into their mouths.

This has resulted in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of grown-ass adults tasting pieces of plastic.

As far as I know, a bittering agent was added specifically so that tiny children (and presumably pets as well) would not be so quick to use their incredible powers of putting literally everything that isn't food into their mouths.

This has resulted in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of grown-ass adults tasting pieces of plastic.

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is. Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for. But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda. Then it's research.

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is. Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for. But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda. Then it's research.

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is. Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for. But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda. Then it's research.

And that is why I stopped playing Skyrim. I'll stop playing and then decide I should start play again but all the mods are broken for some reason and HOURS of work and fuck it I'll just go wander around in Dark Souls.

I just beat Final Fantasy XV. It was good! One of the better final fantasies. The combat is really fun. The story... there were a lot of plot holes for something without much going on, but the main character was slightly less obnoxious than the lead from numerous other FF games. What I didn't get about the game was the aesthetic. Like the setting is, for the most part, the American Midwest (but ... not). You're playing their Prince, which is this Japanese male fashion model looking kid. You just don't feel like you belong in the setting. But overall, the gameplay was actually fun, so, I could get over it.

Axiom Verge is a must-download for fans of Super Metroid.

I'm looking for a good PS4 tower defense game. I've played Defense Grid 2, it was awesome. Any suggestions?

There was a two year period of my life where I beat games in this order:Dark souls 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, bloodborne, bloodborne, 1, 3, 3

GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH-snip-I'm looking for a good PS4 tower defense game. I've played Defense Grid 2, it was awesome. Any suggestions?

If you liked the Soulsborne franchise, try Nioh. It's very different and very similar at the same time. I've noted it comes a bit closer to Hotline Miami-style action within the same framework -- you die faster but you're stuck for a shorter period of time at the frustrating parts. Also: mission-based instead of open world, loot-based character progression instead of stat-based progression, and a slightly more "fighting-game-y" combat system. I've described it as "Onimusha 3 and Dark Souls make nasty love with bad ARPG loot system" when talking to the boyfriend about it.

I have a big ol' list of PS4 TD games here. Let's see which ones are good... (List is here (https://www.50gameslike.com/best-games-by-type/tower-defense/ps4).)

Unholy Heights is a good one. It's weird -- you're managing an apartment complex of monsters and you need to make sure they have appropriate furniture and neighbors, kind of distantly reminiscent of The Sims, or Animal Crossing a bit I guess. But you're also trying to strategically direct the monsters to move into certain parts of the complex, because every so often some humans come by and it turns into tower defense on a door-by-door basis -- the enemies stop at each door, beat up the monsters, and move onward, aiming to reach your office and kill the Prince of Darkness (Oh, right: you play as Satan).

I described it once as "Animal Crossing in Hell, except your hellneighbors defend your office from LARPers with their lives." Weirdly compelling.

I haven't played or highly dislike most of the others on this list. There's two Plants vs Zombies games on PS4, though, if you like that series.

On the other hand, if you like your tower defense games to be nails-hard, of variable pace, with decent visual quality but questionable design decisions, Deathtrap is apparently coming out on PS4 soon -- and that is a special game. Spin-off of the Van Helsing Diablo clone series, no mazing but /lots/ of available delaying tactics, and your character as a force multiplier when necessary.

And it's still tough as all hell. You have to not die (death takes gate points and it's impossible to get the full bonus on a three-star mission without doing a perfect map clear) but your defenses are very often not anywhere near enough damage being laid down, especially in the three-star missions, so you need to tank enemies at strategic locations to whittle their health down -- and they hit you like you're Richard Spencer, so that's easier said than done.

And you absolutely need to do the three-star missions, because vital unlocks (Trap Skill Points) are locked behind them -- you can't grind them up except by playing missions you haven't already beaten. EXP is limited too, everything's limited, it's /weird/ and feels oddly unnatural -- and yet I don't see how they could improve upon the end experience with what they brought to the table.

Underrated, viciously difficult in a way no other Tower Defense game I've ever played has been. Worth a shot when it comes out on PS4. (If you don't mind playing games on PC, it's already out on Steam. So is Unholy Heights.)

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is. Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for. But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda. Then it's research.

And that is why I stopped playing Skyrim. I'll stop playing and then decide I should start play again but all the mods are broken for some reason and HOURS of work and fuck it I'll just go wander around in Dark Souls.

Last year it was discovered that a lot of "stable" mods...are not. ugridstoload, Duel....a shit ton of others I can't recall. And then USLEEP was released and while most modders changed their dependencies to account for it, old mods like SkyRe have not been.

I will say if you want a simple plug and play approach to mods, Enai Sinaon's stuff is great. Ordinator (perks) plus Imperious (races) plus Apocalypse (spells) plus Thunderchild (shouts) plus Sacrosanct (vampires) plus Aurora (standing stones) open up so many different playstyles, are stable, have low script-load and requires virtually no patching. Throw in USLEEP, Campfire/Frostfall, Immersive Weapons/Armours, Interesting NPCs/Inigo/Arissa and a combat mod of your choice and you're good to go. Plus he deserves some respect, the amount of bullshit nonsense he has to put up with from people who took a perk and complain that the perk did exactly what it said it did is unbelievable.

I'm currently trying to work on the Requiem overhaul, which is a bit trickier because it requires patches for a lot of stuff. Not everything, not as bad as it used to be, and lots of stuff is incompatible anyway. But it requires a bit more attention to detail.

And yeah, sometimes I just say "fuck this shit" and boot up Inquisition. Throw on Walk Softly and it might as well be a Souls game, "defeat the mage with infinite barrier who spams Fade Cloak to become invulnerable every 2 seconds...in your first fight outside of the opening sequence."

Jesus fucking Christ I forgot how much of a pain in the arse modding Skyrim is. Someone remind me in like, 2 weeks time, to make a backup of my Mod Organiser folder, so I never have to do this bullshit again.

On the plus side, this does mean I have successfully weeded out a bunch of legacy mods that were proving increasingly difficult to patch for. But still...urgh.

Nigel, you should see if you can do a PhD on Zelda. Then it's research.

And that is why I stopped playing Skyrim. I'll stop playing and then decide I should start play again but all the mods are broken for some reason and HOURS of work and fuck it I'll just go wander around in Dark Souls.

Last year it was discovered that a lot of "stable" mods...are not. ugridstoload, Duel....a shit ton of others I can't recall. And then USLEEP was released and while most modders changed their dependencies to account for it, old mods like SkyRe have not been.

I will say if you want a simple plug and play approach to mods, Enai Sinaon's stuff is great. Ordinator (perks) plus Imperious (races) plus Apocalypse (spells) plus Thunderchild (shouts) plus Sacrosanct (vampires) plus Aurora (standing stones) open up so many different playstyles, are stable, have low script-load and requires virtually no patching. Throw in USLEEP, Campfire/Frostfall, Immersive Weapons/Armours, Interesting NPCs/Inigo/Arissa and a combat mod of your choice and you're good to go. Plus he deserves some respect, the amount of bullshit nonsense he has to put up with from people who took a perk and complain that the perk did exactly what it said it did is unbelievable.

I'm currently trying to work on the Requiem overhaul, which is a bit trickier because it requires patches for a lot of stuff. Not everything, not as bad as it used to be, and lots of stuff is incompatible anyway. But it requires a bit more attention to detail.

And yeah, sometimes I just say "fuck this shit" and boot up Inquisition. Throw on Walk Softly and it might as well be a Souls game, "defeat the mage with infinite barrier who spams Fade Cloak to become invulnerable every 2 seconds...in your first fight outside of the opening sequence."

Enai actually stopped making quest mods after some massive drama. Dwemertech and the one about the Magna-Ge, they both got a ton of backlash because they locked people getting the cool spells and stuff behind /gameplay/, how /dare/ he. Also he used a trick, the same trick Skyrim teaches you to rely on when navigating dungeons -- of falling into water to mitigate fall damage. And put the player up high enough that they'd have plenty of time to steer toward such safe liquid. Unconscionable.

Last I heard he was also working on a combat mod that didn't rely on a million scripts that would end up orphaned and bloating saves to hell, since he helped uncover that all combat mods out currently rely on dangerous methods and sane people don't have many options now. He's a cool guy and definitely deserves the support.

Yeah, he actually made it in the end. Two of them in fact - Wildcat and Smilodon, though the latter is Special Edition only. They're not bad, though they cut a little against Ordinator because they increase weapon damage (Ordinator relies a lot on combos instead of passive damage buffs, such as following a normal attack with a directional power attack for additional effects, so if everything dies in one hit...)

Still, you can tailor them to mitigate that, and they're worth taking for the enemy combat forms and stamina cost improvement if nothing else. Combat Evolved does the same thing, but slightly differently and in a more frustrating way, as anyone who has fought an enemy with a shield with CE installed can attest.

And yeah, he's a really cool dude. He's always in the comment sections of his mods...which probably isn't making his life any easier, given how many idiots complain to him about things. "This perk says it will drain charges from my enchanted weapon when I draw it and whenever I draw it I lose charges?!" "This perk says I can only cast a limited number of spells a day and now my spells are limited?!"

Tonight, I think, I will purchase animu waifu trash vidya game NieR: Automata.

Normally I would keep a nice broad decontamination zone between me and a game of that type, but I played the demo and it is a slick, shiny, and smooth (hur hur hur) crazy action game with a billion combat mechanics and a fun boss battle. Plus you can do weird stuff like removing your health bar or mini-map from the screen to free up "processor space" (because the player character is a robot) and apply upgrades.

Nani the fuck did you just fucking iimasu about watashi, you chiisai bitch desuka? Watashi’ll have anata know that watashi graduated top of my class in Nihongo 3, and watashi’ve been involved in iroirona Nihongo tutoring sessions, and watashi have over sanbyaku perfect test scores. Watashi am trained in kanji, and watashi is the top letter writer in all of southern California. Anata are nothing to watashi but just another weaboo. Watashi will korosu anata the fuck out with vocabulary the likes of which has never been mimasu’d before on this continent, mark watashino fucking words. Anata thinks anata can get away with hanashimasing that kuso to watashi over the intaaneto? Omou again, fucker. As we hanashimasu, watashi am contacting watashino secret netto of otakus across the USA, and anatano IP is being traced right now so you better junbishimasu for the ame, ujimushi. The ame that korosu’s the pathetic chiisai thing anata calls anatano life. You’re fucking shinimashita’d, akachan.

Nani the fuck did you just fucking iimasu about watashi, you chiisai bitch desuka? Watashi’ll have anata know that watashi graduated top of my class in Nihongo 3, and watashi’ve been involved in iroirona Nihongo tutoring sessions, and watashi have over sanbyaku perfect test scores. Watashi am trained in kanji, and watashi is the top letter writer in all of southern California. Anata are nothing to watashi but just another weaboo. Watashi will korosu anata the fuck out with vocabulary the likes of which has never been mimasu’d before on this continent, mark watashino fucking words. Anata thinks anata can get away with hanashimasing that kuso to watashi over the intaaneto? Omou again, fucker. As we hanashimasu, watashi am contacting watashino secret netto of otakus across the USA, and anatano IP is being traced right now so you better junbishimasu for the ame, ujimushi. The ame that korosu’s the pathetic chiisai thing anata calls anatano life. You’re fucking shinimashita’d, akachan.

(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/094/464/da0.jpg)

I thought I was having a stroke. Then I realized the truth was so much worse.

Just saw the Mass Effect: Andromeda multiplayer trailer. Looks promising. As I'm sure you all know, I played the shit out of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer (over 2000 hours), and while it was simple, in comparison to say Battlefield or CoD, it had a certain amount of variety in weapons and characters that made it very replayable. It looks like they've applied the same formula to Andromeda. 4 player co-op, shared XP, 10 waves of increasingly difficult battles against enemies, extra objectives on certain waves. Also 25 characters, 5 maps and all the base weapons on launch (which appear to be the majority of weapons in Mass Effect 3...so possibly 40+ guns).

Once I get my hands on the demo tomorrow, I'll play the shit out of the MP and give further impressions.

Just saw the Mass Effect: Andromeda multiplayer trailer. Looks promising. As I'm sure you all know, I played the shit out of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer (over 2000 hours), and while it was simple, in comparison to say Battlefield or CoD, it had a certain amount of variety in weapons and characters that made it very replayable. It looks like they've applied the same formula to Andromeda. 4 player co-op, shared XP, 10 waves of increasingly difficult battles against enemies, extra objectives on certain waves. Also 25 characters, 5 maps and all the base weapons on launch (which appear to be the majority of weapons in Mass Effect 3...so possibly 40+ guns).

Once I get my hands on the demo tomorrow, I'll play the shit out of the MP and give further impressions.

I was at PAX East on Saturday and my friends wanted to check out the Mass Effect stuff.

I just told them no. Are any of us really going to not buy Mass Effect? We're all buying Mass Effect. It doesn't matter if we look at it or play it beforehand or get a Mass Effect pin: we're all going to buy Mass Effect. Let's spend some time on these indies that we won't hear about otherwise.

Just saw the Mass Effect: Andromeda multiplayer trailer. Looks promising. As I'm sure you all know, I played the shit out of Mass Effect 3's multiplayer (over 2000 hours), and while it was simple, in comparison to say Battlefield or CoD, it had a certain amount of variety in weapons and characters that made it very replayable. It looks like they've applied the same formula to Andromeda. 4 player co-op, shared XP, 10 waves of increasingly difficult battles against enemies, extra objectives on certain waves. Also 25 characters, 5 maps and all the base weapons on launch (which appear to be the majority of weapons in Mass Effect 3...so possibly 40+ guns).

Once I get my hands on the demo tomorrow, I'll play the shit out of the MP and give further impressions.

Generally, I avoid multiplayer games in a big way. I take no joy from battling Internet strangers.

Me3 was different... just the fact that you were cooperating with random internet strangers instead of blowing them up.. it was a whole different culture. Really smart design.

So I've played the first two hours of the Andromeda singleplayer demo campaign. So far, so good. It seems to run well on my PC with a steady 60 FPS (GTX 1060, 16 gig ram, 4.2 mhz intel i7 processor), and while the movements seem just a little sluggish, the keyboard and mouse controls seem fairly decent so far (remains to be seen how well that continues once profiles are available).

Graphically it's definitely pretty to look at, slightly better than Dragon Age Inquisition, though the lip-syncing is questionable in places.

Combat appears to be fun, despite my currently limited options. I can definitely see playing a vanguard working - using the jetpack to launch yourself into the air, shooting a few enemies to soften them up and reduce the fall speed, then rushing in with a biotic charge and finishing them up. Currently playing on hardcore, have died a few times but that could be from being on the nightshift.

Very disappointed to see that my plans to play as an infiltrator have been nerfed by the requirement for 9 skill points in the tech tree before I can take tactical cloak. Very sad. Plans on being a space ninja, using tac-cloak and melee, have been put on hold. M-8 Avenger is as useless as it always was. M-3 Predator continues in its role of being slightly less useless than the Avenger, but only when you court carpal tunnel syndrome by spamming it. Power tracking over/around cover appears to have been toned down as well, but requires more testing.

Can't really speak to the plot so far, as not much has happened on that front. Our candidate for a new home sucks, and is overrun by hostile aliens and even more hostile wildlife and even more hostile weather. We crashed due to the last one, so we're currently bumming around the surface, looking for lost supplies and team mates. Voice acting is as good as you'd expect, though.

1) Pugs are just as terrible as expected. I've played about 15 matches tonight, and been on maybe 3 good teams, possibly another two I'd class as competent.2) Pugs love to broadcast the sound of themselves eating, or the sounds coming out of their speakers. Thankfully, Bioware has implemented a mute option.3) Interesting bugs so far include: losing all sound while playing a match. You need to restart the entire game from desktop to get it back. And apparently if you change hosts, there is a non-zero chance that the entire game will just freeze on you.

Matches are much shorter with the 7 wave system. Some variations on old objectives make it feel a bit closer to other shooter titles, such as multiple hack objectives to capture. Others, assassination and devices, remain as they ever were. Shieldgating on enemies has been removed. The Salarian Infiltrator with a Widow is still pretty powerful (this and the previous point may be connected). Most launch maps do not seem suited for sniping however, like when ME3 was launched, I think powers may be the way to go, though I've not fully levelled up a biotic yet to see just how powerful biotic explosions can be. The Krogan Vanguard has Nova as a power.

1) Pugs are just as terrible as expected. I've played about 15 matches tonight, and been on maybe 3 good teams, possibly another two I'd class as competent.2) Pugs love to broadcast the sound of themselves eating, or the sounds coming out of their speakers. Thankfully, Bioware has implemented a mute option.

Because I have no real idea what you are talking about, I imagined this as meaning that you are now playing with a pack of intelligent but mannerless pug dogs.

Pugs = pick up games. Essentially, playing with random people online rather than friends. Like, when I do play with friends, it's pretty trivial to crush any difficulty, not necessarily because we're all so awesome but because we do have a certain basic level of competence and know how to move around the map, control enemy spawns, make effective use of our equipment, communicate etc

In other words, it's no challenge. Playing with three randoms of questionable skill, intelligence or sanity however is where heroes are forged and legends are born.

It'd probably go better in many cases if there were actual pugs on the other end.

Alright, here you go (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXTtHlASh-I&feature=youtu.be). Literally just uploaded, so maybe give it 10 minutes to get the 1080p resolution option. Edit: nevermind, it's good to go.

You should see the videos of the matches I never posted. Like the guy who had his mic next to a fan and his speakers, ensuring all I could hear was the constant sound of the game coming back at me from 2 seconds ago, and a lot of static.

This is why player mute is such a godsend.

And that's without going into the ME3MP matches I've had. I've been in games where I have scored 90K by round 6, with everyone else not even scoring 10K. 90K can easily be an end of game score, and none of that was because I was great - they were just that bad. I've revived people 15 times before round 3 is over. I've soloed half the entire match because people died that fast and didn't bring medigel to revive.

You should see the videos of the matches I never posted. Like the guy who had his mic next to a fan and his speakers, ensuring all I could hear was the constant sound of the game coming back at me from 2 seconds ago, and a lot of static.

This is why player mute is such a godsend.

And that's without going into the ME3MP matches I've had. I've been in games where I have scored 90K by round 6, with everyone else not even scoring 10K. 90K can easily be an end of game score, and none of that was because I was great - they were just that bad. I've revived people 15 times before round 3 is over. I've soloed half the entire match because people died that fast and didn't bring medigel to revive.

Nani the fuck did you just fucking iimasu about watashi, you chiisai bitch desuka? Watashi’ll have anata know that watashi graduated top of my class in Nihongo 3, and watashi’ve been involved in iroirona Nihongo tutoring sessions, and watashi have over sanbyaku perfect test scores. Watashi am trained in kanji, and watashi is the top letter writer in all of southern California. Anata are nothing to watashi but just another weaboo. Watashi will korosu anata the fuck out with vocabulary the likes of which has never been mimasu’d before on this continent, mark watashino fucking words. Anata thinks anata can get away with hanashimasing that kuso to watashi over the intaaneto? Omou again, fucker. As we hanashimasu, watashi am contacting watashino secret netto of otakus across the USA, and anatano IP is being traced right now so you better junbishimasu for the ame, ujimushi. The ame that korosu’s the pathetic chiisai thing anata calls anatano life. You’re fucking shinimashita’d, akachan.

(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/094/464/da0.jpg)

I thought I was having a stroke. Then I realized the truth was so much worse.

So I think I know what is going on with the weird facial expressions in Andromeda which has everyone so wound up.

My rig meets the recommended quality that the game requires, and while I've noticed some weirdness, it's been very minor, sporadic and hasn't occured since the launch of the game itself.

I think what they've done is they've tried to introduce micro-expressions into the animations. I've watched closely while talking with more important characters - the Tempest's crew, for example - and they do a lot of looking around, blinking and quick smiles or frowns. I suspect that, partly because Bioware has never had excellent animations and partly because lots of people are still running around with subpar PC specs, these aren't quite being rendered properly and so they lead to weird, stilted facial expressions.

Apparently the gay male romance is also quite poor, and doesn't recieve as much love as the other romances. That's a shame, since apparently the gay male romance in Inquisition was very good - but then two different teams worked on the two games, Edmonton is more experienced and handled Inquisition, while the less experienced Montreal did Andromeda. Also I believe David Gaider wrote Dorian's romance, and Gaider is himself gay, in addition to being a very experienced lead writer.

Some of the general dialogue is a bit stilted in places too, but we've also not made any really important decisions so far, that I can tell. I've just finished off getting a settlement on Eos, the first planet, and the most important thing I've decided is whether to have a military or research settlement, and who to wake out of cryo-stasis first. That said, I've had the opportunity to tell the leaders of the Pathfinder Initiative that I don't appreciate the political games they are playing, which is nice. Both Tann and Addison are doing my head in and are first in line to be thrown out an airlock if I get the chance. Kandros, Turian militia leader and the Krogan are alright though. The logical/empathetic/professional/casual options are nice, but an angry option would also be good - we've put up with a lot of bullshit already.

Montreal was the team which made ME3MP and designed several side missions in ME3 and, I believe, Inquisition, so the combat is living up to expectations. I'm not getting much use out of the jetpack in combat, but I'm playing as an infiltrator, and I could see that being more useful for a vanguard - jump, shoot a bit, then biotic charge to get your shields back. Hardcore difficulty is OK - I've had my ass handed to me a ouple of times, but I usually win the next fight. I've finally got enough powers that I can have two different profiles, but I've yet to try switching them in combat. I have my infiltrator set up with Cloak, Marksman (whatever it's called in this game - the power that makes you more accurate and fire faster) and Overload, with the Engineer profile having Overload, Incinerate and Conc Shot. I figure those will be the bread and butter of my build - firepower, crowd control and anti-armour/anti-shields is a decent combination I think.

I found this super weird game for PS4 called Everything. I was hooked in because the game features narration by Alan Watts.

The game's kind of hard to describe. This is more of a zen-experience sandbox than a traditional game. It's about Being, and becoming different things. It reminds me a lot of Sagan's line that we are the universe trying to know itself.

You start off as some kind of animal - I started as an Elk. Your options are kind of limited. You can wander around, and if you see other Elks, you can press circle to "join" with them. Then "you" aren't just one elk, but as many as are in the group. You can form groups, or break groups. When beings are in a group, you can make them dance, and sometimes that leads to reproduction.

You can also ascend or descend into other scales of beings. If you're standing next to a blade of grass, you can become that blade of grass. From the grass's perspective, you'll be able to see tiny stones, ants, worms, etc.. you can shrink down and become them. If you go down far enough you will become pollen, dust, smaller leads you to DNA, bacteria, atoms, going deeper still leads you to a world which is just geometric patterns. Keep going down and you start to see galaxies--you've looped around to the top of a different cosmos.

Most of the gameplay is explorative. It has a kind of pokemon-feel where everything you become gets added to your collection, and it tells you "You've been 41% of all trees". So there's this urge to Be everything in the universe, to taste everything and try it out. There are also little icons that appear in the world sometimes - when you touch one, you unlock a snippet from an Alan Watts talk.

On the plus side there's no new mediocre npcs and it basically looks to be implementing various fan patches over the years. No mention of new/expanded plot beyond bug fixes.

It also seems to be selling itself heavily on "old version hard to install and play" which is quite frankly bullshit. I've had no issues running it on win10 at all, either disc or the standard gog release.

Which leaves graphics and ui as the main change. In beamdog terms that means "slap a white outline round your guys" and in general look cutting edge for around 2005 or so. There was some other nonsense about screen resolutions and loading speed too. Ho hum.

It's very strange, there's a lot that could have been helped here, you're dealing with a game from around 99 after all. There's a big enough fan base to support a remake over a dodgy remaster.

I actually had some issues with a disc I bought a few years back with installing (Windows 7 and 10) and had even more problems with trying to mod it so UI and screen resolution overhaul is perfect for me.

I'm also not sure that there needs to a successor to the game. A spritual successor (not Tides of Numenera, from what I hear that doesn't quite come up to standard), maybe, but not a sequel.

For clarity by what I meant, the infinity engine worked well in its day, but it was lacking in a few areas which were largely fixed in say, pillars of eternity. So those are easy fixes to copy. What planescape lacked, if anything, was cutsences. There's a few plot critical bits where you have no control and a 30 second fmv would have done wonders for. And the source art and script is right there to make something quite fancy with. Instead the only film clip of the ultimate bbeg is a 5 second death clip. There's at least 1 point that would easily benefit from a reveal for pacing.

I'd go on but spoilers and such. Next post assumes you've bothered playing it through or at least getting a Wikipedia summary

And yeah, I've modded other Infinity Engine games before - I must have had half a dozen mods running for BG2 by the end, class overhauls, additional classes, additional companions, encounter overhauls (including those which eventually formed the basis for Strategems of the Sword Coast) and new quests - so I don't know what happened there.

Speaking of complex modding, I'm attempting to mod Oblivion. Nothing fancy, just a bajillion bugfixes, crash fixes, a new levelling system, a new UI and up to date graphics.

Should be a piece of cake

:lulz:

Psssh, I bet Oblivion doesn't even have ONE quest where you kill some Draugr, dodge traps that you then spring on more Draugr, and then a bigger, meaner Draugr that you fight by chugging 40 potions and kill with a dagger for cheap yuks.

7 patches later, and the game is mostly as it should have been when it was shipped, though the multiplayer is still an unholy mess of bad netcode and grind designed to lure you into microtransactions.

With the exception of maybe Drack, who is basically Wrex 2.0, and Reyes Vidal (voiced by the always excellent Nicholas Boulton), none of the characters stand out, except perhaps to piss you off. It's not clear that any of your actions have any impact, at least in this game. The "story-rich" side quests seem designed to actively piss you off...I actually took a break from the game after doing the now infamous "Contagion" questline (which makes you backtrack over what feels like the entire cluster for very little payoff in terms of story or anything else).

Ironically, some of the best content may be the stuff we never see, or is only alluded to. The "Ryder family secrets" and fate of the Quarian Ark, while obvious sequel bait, have a lot more potential than anything else we see in the entire game.

The combat is also pretty fun. I've been doing a Insanity difficulty vanguard run, mostly to show up the whiners who are all "you have to sniper on the higher difficulties" weenies. You can effectively chain invincibility frames from biotic charge, nova and the (asari sword) melee which, along with the saving barrier upgrade and vanguard profile siphoning strikes makes you unkillable.

But yeah, if you're going to play it, just do the main quest, which is mostly OK, though nothing amazing, and the companion quests. Everything else just isn't worth it.

From the vidya gaems podcasts I listen to, it sounds like the Mass Effect IP has been "indefinitely shelved" after ME:A. Andromeda will continue to be supported but, unsurprisingly, we probably won't see a direct sequel.

In my vague attempts to have some financial discipline, I made myself "finish" NeiR: Automata before picking up Prey. By "finish" I mean I got endings A through E of the 26 endings (the vast majority of which are joke endings, of course). There's still one or two interesting ones out there for me, but now I can move on before taking the final plunge and accepting the ending that sacrifices all of your save data (yes, really). If you're the kind of weird asshole who wants to sink 60 hrs into a shiny game with good dynamic music, a BIZARRE story with multiple endings, and sexy robot asses, then this is the bullshit for you.

In regards to Prey: I'm glad I waited, because I've since received info that the PC version is quite good and in certain respects more fun to play. After trying the demo on my PS4, I can believe it. The way enemies can flit around means that mouse aiming is even more better than normal, because the tiny enemies are little fucks who can skitter out of your field of view very fast. Also, it has a futuristic space version of an Art Deco aesthetic (lots of cherrywood, brass/gold detailing, and combinations of sharp angles and geometric curves), and that shit is basically scenery porn for me.

Yeah, though there's been some confused reporting on that. Most of the team that made the game were due to be shunted off to Battlefield 2 anyway, and it's not clear whether there is DLC in the pipeline or not. I think it would be safe to say that, no matter what, Bioware Montreal wont be trusted with another big name IP for a long time (Edmonton are still working on their new IP, and presumably once that is done, Dragon Age 4, so maybe after that? Still looking at least 7 years though).

Casey Hudson needs to be thrown in an airlock though. Like, for real. He's now fucked up 2 games in a row, even when given extra time and budget.

I was semi-tempted by Prey, but a lot of the Dishonored people were saying it was like Dishonored, only not quite as fun. Maybe once it's on special. I'd rather save my money for Dishonored DLC and Middle Earth: Shadows of War, though.

A sensible choice. Prey has enough going for it stylistically that I'm totally willing to dive right into it, even though upon playing the demo I can confirm that it is very much "Dishonored 2 in space", but with less stealth.

The way the story integrates the overplayed Video Game Amnesia trope into both the narrative and mechanics is also really well done.

7 patches later, and the game is mostly as it should have been when it was shipped, though the multiplayer is still an unholy mess of bad netcode and grind designed to lure you into microtransactions.

With the exception of maybe Drack, who is basically Wrex 2.0, and Reyes Vidal (voiced by the always excellent Nicholas Boulton), none of the characters stand out, except perhaps to piss you off. It's not clear that any of your actions have any impact, at least in this game. The "story-rich" side quests seem designed to actively piss you off...I actually took a break from the game after doing the now infamous "Contagion" questline (which makes you backtrack over what feels like the entire cluster for very little payoff in terms of story or anything else).

Ironically, some of the best content may be the stuff we never see, or is only alluded to. The "Ryder family secrets" and fate of the Quarian Ark, while obvious sequel bait, have a lot more potential than anything else we see in the entire game.

The combat is also pretty fun. I've been doing a Insanity difficulty vanguard run, mostly to show up the whiners who are all "you have to sniper on the higher difficulties" weenies. You can effectively chain invincibility frames from biotic charge, nova and the (asari sword) melee which, along with the saving barrier upgrade and vanguard profile siphoning strikes makes you unkillable.

But yeah, if you're going to play it, just do the main quest, which is mostly OK, though nothing amazing, and the companion quests. Everything else just isn't worth it.

The four lads I lived with who started playing Andromeda, all independently stopped and went back to play ME1, not because Andromeda was bad, just that it couldn't compare and made them nostalgic for the original.

Yeah, objectively it's not a terrible game...it's just not on a par with any of the other games from the trilogy.

It feels like they were trying to make ME1 again, only not as good. Exploration is, ironically, a complete waste of time, since you can only land on the designated habitat worlds. I was expecting at least side quests on the other system planets, much like ME1...land, ride in the Nomad, secure the base/artifact/pyjack, maybe have a chain of side quests like ME1's Cerberus. Maybe even expanded to asteroids and space stations, or large enemy/derelict ships.

But nope. You get your 270 XP, your minerals and a description of a planet and that's all chump.

Crafting also completely negates the need to explore to upgrade gear or acquire credits to upgrade gear too...since found or pre-bought weapons and armour don't have attachable augments, a crafted weapon would always be superior. And some of the augment bonuses are no joke - restore shields 25% on kill (put that on my vanguard's N7 armour, to make her even more unkillable), 25% more damage for 5 seconds after reloading, convert weapons to grenade launchers/no thermal clips etc. You do need tech scans to upgrade material, but you can get those via bonuses for awakening colonists from cryo pods, as well as from the APEX strike team mini-game. And for raw materials for crafting, you can also get those via in game bonuses/strike teams, as well as by breaking down the shittier weapons you do come across.

This could all be solved by doubling the research and material costs for crafting, and allowing pre-made weapons to be augmented, which is probably the worst part. Prices seem about right, the actual in-game economy is fairly decent, but crafting allows you to ignore it entirely. Crafting also gives you access to certain armours and weapons that are either so rare I haven't seen them drop across 100+ hours of gameplay, or actually cannot drop (I suspect the N7 armour is in this category).

Yeah it just seems like a bad photocopy of previous mass effect titles. It's still a good game. I got like 50% of the way through it, then had a momentary impulse to play some Bloodborne, and, whelp... Now I'm re-beating Bloodborne. It's not that I wasn't enjoying myself. But it also wasn't really hooking me in. And blooborne fucking rules.

ME: Andromeda seemed like... you can really tell the original team isn't there and the new team didn't bring anything fresh to the table. All they can really do is repackage the original cool ideas.

My top criticism is that it feels very unimaginative, which sucks for a series that I felt was very creative and unique. It also feels like one of these "big studio" games, where every part of the game was designed by a different sub-team, but they aren't coordinated real well.

Like, the whole premise is that you're exploring another galaxy. So this should be cool! Mass effect always has these really interesting aliens, and these ones are from so far away from us that we're gonna be in fresh territory. But, it doesn't FEEL like a new galaxy, it feels like another milky way, if that makes sense? But with less politics, less stuff going on in general.

And oh yeah, what's the deal with how they set up this whole Neil Armstrong moment of being the first explorers of a new galaxy.. and then you find out that milky-way people have actually already been here for over a year. They already littered the whole galaxy with ammo dumps and half-built structures and documented everything. Not only are you not the first ones here, but people have had time to build bases and rebel against each other and split into subfactions...

Regarding the aliens... I can accept the Mass Effect premise that evolution has these "convergence points", some traits are just the "best way of evolving", so we get a galaxy full of bipedals with faces, hands, etc... Sure, that makes sense because you want the aliens to be relate-able.

But somehow.. I was hoping for more stuff like the Elcorr or the Hanharr. Instead, the new galaxy just has different flavors of angarans, which feel basically like space humans? It kinda bothered me that they don't really seem alien at all. Sure there are a few unique features to them, and they look cool, but do they seem "alien"? Nahhh

Also, the Remnants... it just feels kinda like the Protheans.. cruising around the galaxy looking for the super-race that existed here long ago. It's almost like I already did this for three games.

Also, the Kett... so they (((((((SPOILER WARNING))))))) basically do the exact same thing as the Collectors? Capture people and convert them? Seems like something I already dealt with for two games.

Also, as soon as they revealed the kett general, I was struck how this seems like the exact same structure as Dragon Age Inquisition. First you deal with mysterious butthole-faced creatures that want to kill you, you fortify your base(s), then they reveal the big bad, then he taunts you for two or three acts, then you confront him... it just feels like a copy and paste. I mean I get that a lot of RPGs use that structure, but it just feels SO SIMILAR to the plot beats of DA:I...

and the party members are pretty mediocre

and the dialog is far less branched... if you replay the same scene and select different dialog options, the NPCs usually say the exact same things.

and there is no alignment axis like paragon/renegade... but I guess that's okay since it's not like you really make any significant choices, at least in the half of the game I've played.

and oh yeah - and this criticism might not be so much targeted at ME:A but a statement about a lot of games coming out in the last few years... But the 'sandbox' fad is also getting a bit threadbare. Don't get me wrong, I like sandboxes, I like freedom. Games like skyrim have so much replayability because there is so much jammed into that sandbox just waiting for you to discover.

But the way most developers approach the "sandbox" is to create these wide open maps and then dump like 100 little quest icons into it. All of them are light little encounters, a single bite of gameplay.

The consequence of this design is that most of the gameplay gets sucked into this discovery loop. You're tediously clearing every icon from a region, one by one. When set up this way, it *doesn't* feel like exploration. It feels like just going through a check list in a nonlinear order.

I will come back and finish it, but it felt really meh to me. Meh Effect: Andromehda.

My recommendation? Do the vaults, put down a colony on each planet, do companion loyalty quests, find all the arks, do the "Movie night" sidequest and do the main quest.

And nothing else.

You can actually do all of that in under 20 hours, so I'm told, and it's like 90% of the game content that actually matters. You can also skip the loyalty quests if you want, with absolutely zero consequence, but they are pretty fun for the most part.

And whatever you do, don't do "Contagion", or "The Little Things That Matter".

Finished ME2 for the first time, not sure how I feel about the ending. Do spoiler still apply for games that old? I lost three characters in the final mission (Thane, Legion and Kasumi), Thane was dying so I'm not too sad, legion I had only just got and I am afraid I have made the geth extinct, kasumi I couldn't give a shit about.

Speaking of Bruma, I finally got around to levelling a couple of characters and I'm planning on recording me playing it blind once I've advanced them a little further. Well, like 90% blind. I know that there is no main quest (that will come with the full Cyrodiil: Seat of Sundered Kings release) and I do know that there are some pretty steep speech checks (and lets be fair, it is Cyrodiil. Until Skyrim fucked up the schema, Imperials always had the highest starting Personality/Speech skills, and it is the centre of a decaying empire filled with intrigue and plots).

I was originally going to take my weird battlemage, but I'm thinking if speech scores are that important my thief/bard would be better. Not sure though. Either way I'm using Ordinator so it automatically should be more fun and interesting than normal Skyrim, whichever I choose.

I've decided Middle Earth: Shadow of War is the best game ever, after seeing a stream where one of the orcs is called "Dush", prounounced, well, "douche".

Celebrimbor is all "I'm coming for you, douche." When you attack his followers to draw him out, they're all there chanting "douche, douche, douche". And then you can shame him by going "you are unworthy, douche".

It's bullshit because the premise on which the entire complaint is made is false. The complaint is that it takes an incredibly unfair and long period of time to unlock certain powerful characters and weapons in Star Wars: Battlefront 2, unless you are willing to pay for lootboxes which give you a chance to bypass this.

This is wrong for a number of reasons. Firstly, all the characters and weapons can be unlocked via in-game credits and by doing challenges. I wouldn't blame anyone for not knowing about the latter challenges, because the UI for Battlefront is atrocious and navigating it is a real challenge - if anything, that and the decision to lock off credit earnings from the arcade mode are far more serious and legitimate complaints.

Secondly, the grind is quite reasonable. I've seen figures of 50-80 hours to unlock Darth Vader, the capstone character for the Empire. However, I've seen someone get enough in-game credit to unlock his character in less than 8 hours. They chose not to, because they wanted to unlock other characters first, but it's entirely doable. No doubt if you want to unlock special costumes and victory dances and whatnot for everything, yes, that would probably take a few hundred hours at least to achieve. But does anyone really care about those things? Apart from some hardcore completionists, no.

To put this into perspective, the average amount of time it took a player to max their manifest in ME3MP was 800 hours, for all characters and all weapons at max level, with no way to complete challenges to unlock weapons, and with only a chance (via lootboxes) at getting character or weapon unlocks.

Thirdly, the game is not only pretty fun, it is supremely well optimised for PC players, a goddamn miracle in 2017. It looks good and it runs well, and even on a mid-range rig you can run high-end graphics settings and lock the framerate at 60 FPS with no problems. EA intends to continue support for the game through free DLC and additional maps.

Other games have had far more egregious lootbox systems. Black Ops 3, for example, had certain weapons that could only be unlocked via lootboxes...these happened to be some of the best weapons in the game, what a surprise. League of Legends is another serious offender. I'd even say Zenimax certainly have some...questionable decisions when it comes to monetising content and being evasive around what consumers are getting. Unless I am really missing something big, I can see nothing EA has done that a thousand other companies have also done, with much less or no backlash whatsoever.

I have no real sympathy for EA, and I haven't since I read about how they rushed Dragon Age 2 (which had so much potential to be a great game) into a suicidally short production cycle (though reflecting on that I think some conceptual issues with Bioware and the larger series direction certainly didnt help there). But this hate is so ridiculous I'm actually starting to wonder if this isn't some weird corporate vendetta. EA hate has always been ridiculous, like how it keeps on being voted "Worst Company in America" for the crimes of...admittedly shitty treatment of their employees and not making games to the precise specifications of whining man-children?

Reddit has been flooded for the past week with complaints about EA...it's even infecting non-EA related specific gaming subs, like Dishonored. Admittedly, Reddit tends towards circlejerking and hivemind behaviour at the best of times, but it's also uniquely situated for astro-turfing campaigns. If this is entirely grassroots, however, then that's even worse...it suggests these people are completely out of touch and more than just a little unstable.

Hence why I'm glad you can't easily derive fascism from lootboxes. Because this right here would be a marvellous recruiting opportunity.

Yeah, I would agree too. Most games which have that functionality should be 18+ anyway...though I could definitely see EA/Disney pitching a fit, since they want to get a younger demographic with Battlefront. So there's no actual downside, per se.

It's just odd that this is the tipping point for gamer outrage, like hey it's okay to throw us over a barrel with loot boxes, half finished games, rushed AAA titles, main game content withheld as DLC, dishonest gameplay trailers and promises - but don't withhold Darth Vader.

If it were a legitimate push to be smarter consumers I'd be all for it. By all means let's stop pre-ordering everything and quit buying games just because that's what everybody else is playing. But the demand here seems to be to have our hype based game grabs fulfilled without condition.

This is why I only play single player games that are 2-5 years old and I buy on sale. Witcher 3 is going great, everyone, really loving the Blood and Wine expansion.

I think I picked up Witcher 3 for like, £5 on Steam a while back. Should actually give it a try, since my GPU can now probably handle it.

The first two are good, not as polished (lol) but are worth a playthrough just to get involved in the world. Then Witcher 3 happened. I don't know what the fuck went on with CD Projekt Red between two and three, but I hope they can keep the magic going with Cyberpunk 2077.

I think you'd really appreciate the story of all three. There's a lot of political maneuvering, everybody operates in grey areas, and seemingly minor decisions have a tendency come back later with significant consequences.

Once I get bored with ESO I will put it on my list. That day may be coming somewhat soon....I've played a lot lately, but I've reached a point where the research traits and smithing grind is starting to hit hard. The Dark Brotherhood assassination grind is starting to grate. Cadwell's Silver was starting to grate, but I blame that on the terrible design of the Aldmeri Dominion, which is 90% forests and green fields, and has an utterly uncompelling character in Queen Ayrenn, the Leroy Jenkins of the Altmer race. At least I get to do the Ebonheart Pact next...definitely the best atmosphere of all the alliances, you feel like you're actually a soldier, and the Dunmer show they do not fuck around when it comes to war. Though going to Skyrim will suck...

It's just odd that this is the tipping point for gamer outrage, like hey it's okay to throw us over a barrel with loot boxes, half finished games, rushed AAA titles, main game content withheld as DLC, dishonest gameplay trailers and promises - but don't withhold Darth Vader.

If it were a legitimate push to be smarter consumers I'd be all for it. By all means let's stop pre-ordering everything and quit buying games just because that's what everybody else is playing. But the demand here seems to be to have our hype based game grabs fulfilled without condition.

This is why I only play single player games that are 2-5 years old and I buy on sale. Witcher 3 is going great, everyone, really loving the Blood and Wine expansion.

Yes, yes, late to the party but I've kept an eye on the best thing to come of it.

As far as I can see, the only game that is likely to be worth actual money in the foreseeable future is probably Bannerlord and that assumes it will ever actually get a release date, never mind an actual release.

And even then, it's probably best ignoring it for another year or so to let the modders fix/update/upgrade everything over the base game.

So, it turns out playing like a pacifist in Skyrim sometimes borks the AI.

Level 6, no kills, joined the Thieves Guild and over 5k in gold. No kills includes undead and animals though according to the game stats, butterflies don't count. Apparently this freaked out the first two hostile guys in the Ratway so much they're now freely letting me pass by. Just as well, since I cannot calm them yet.

Summons and companion kills count for the purposes of the stats, using Frenzy and environmental kills (shouting people off mountains, setting traps off next to them) do not. So the plan: power level Illusion for silent casting, steal everything of value in Riften. Train with light armour, go to Bleak Falls Barrow, kill everything via the swinging axe traps, retrieve the Dragonstone and let Irileth kill the dragon while I chill in the tower. Go to the Greybeards, stealth through Ustengrav, get the horn from Delphine, get the final word of Unrelenting Force. Proceed to kite every single enemy in Skyrim up the Throat of the World and Shout them off, declare victory.

I'm also replaying skyrim with a "kill as few people as possible" style. No weapons, focusing on illusion. I've only swung a sword once in the whole game, and it was to kill Ulfric Stormcloak.

Getting through a dungeon using Fear spells is fun -- you disperse the enemies, then in like 2 minutes they come back with friends. You send them all running. Eventually you have pushed all the enemies into the final room of the dungeon with the boss, and just frenzy them all.

Illusion is such an underrated school. I think one of the most unsettling things in Skyrim is when a guy is about to rip your head off, you Pacify him, and he's aware of what's happening. Says something like "Oh don't do that", like he's aware that he is a sitting duck that his Fight-or-Flight response is jammed.

I'm basically replaying it 'cause the PS4 special edition was on sale. It sucks that there aren't a lot of good mods for ps4! I was so excited to take on Randy "Macho Man" World Eater, but nooooooo, not available. I've played so much of this game, the only juice left is stuff I haven't discovered yet, and there isn't a lot of that left.

I'm on PC so I have a few more options, but I'm essentially relying on Ordinator's perk overhaul system as the defining element. Sneak, Illusion and Pickpocket are the major skills, with minor in Restoration (great for controlling undead before you get the perk to cast Illusions on them..turn undead around traps highly effective), Lockipicking, Alteration and Light Armour. Oh and enchanting and alchemy, for defensive purposes.

I have used a dagger, but only to apply paralysis poison to a very angry bear. I also used a bow to whittle down the boss of Bleak Falls Barrow, before kiting him into a bunch of swinging axes.

Now at level 17 I have returned the Dragonstone, offered moral support to the Whiterun Guard in defeating a dragon and am well on my way towards getting Nightingale status and armour, which will make the game a whole lot easier from a stealth and illusion POV.

Edit: I'm thinking that, with the right skills, it would be very possible to become Harbinger of the Companions without killing a single person. Something to test once I'm done with the TG and College of Winterhold (both of which I know are doable). Then will come the real test - the Dork Brotherhood. I reckon I can probably do everything up to killing the Emperor...but killing him does present a problem.

Dark Souls 1 is getting a remaster. Now maybe we can have a proper PC port that doesn't require a mod to run adequately.

Assassin's Creed: Origins is the first AssCreed game I've played since the original and it's the tits. Highly enjoyable.

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is honestly kinda hard as shit and I had to set the difficulty down like the weakling coward I am, but BOY OH BOY does the game go hard with its story. Like, I'm genuinely impressed with how much balls they had with this writing, and they mostly pull it off.

Monster Hunter World had its beta on PS4 a while back, and it was the first Monster Hunter game I've ever touched. Apparently MonHun has a dizzying, intimidating amount of systems and equipment that are involved, but all I know is that I shot bees at a hippopotamus made of rocks and then pole-vaulted onto its back and rode it like a rodeo bull. So uh, best video game ever, basically. Very sad that the PC release is not until Fall.

My character is now level 49. With Sneak and Illusion finally hitting 100, levelling has slowed down somewhat, though there's still skills in lockpicking, alteration, restoration, alchemy, smithing and enchanting to keep us levelling for a while. Currently sitting pretty on 160k gold, which could be a lot more if we were not stocking flawless gems/buying filled soul gems for enchanting, with all houses except the one in Windhelm and the built ones owned and fully upgraded.

Livia, for she is my character, has successfully become leader of the Thieves Guild, after Mercer Frey accidentally fell down a very long drop. Repeatedly. (I like to think the luck of the Skeleton Key ran out, and his earthquake caused him to loose his footing. He definitely didnt die due to me Fus Ro Dahing him in the face until he broke his neck, that is just a circumstantial factor). The Skeleton Key was returned, because it was making this whole thieving thing even easier than it otherwise was, and the guild's presence was fully restored to all the major hold capitals, without any loss of life.

Livia also became a Legate in the Imperial Legion without killing a single person in the civil war. After the initial quest of clearing the bandits (with the final one falling off a very high wall to his death...funny how that keeps happening), it was simply a matter of hiding invisibly on the battlefield, spamming Frenzy or Rally where appropriate, or else pickpocketing and coercing people (which is pretty easy when you're a master thief wearing the Amulet of Articulation). Ulfric was executed by General Tullius, naturally.

Our character then became a bard. Retrieving the Poetic Edda was child's play, and it turns out that the ghost of Svaknir, the Bard executed by Olaf One-Eye is in fact a complete boss. He doesn't even take the knee, he simply never takes damage. So, we frenzied some draugr to speed things along, and poked Olaf a few times with our sword before letting Svaknir finish him off. You can also retrieve two of the bardic instruments with ease, though Rjorn's Drum is only doable if you're willing to use the console - to escape the dungeon it's in, you have to kill the boss. Which makes no sense whatsoever, but such is. I TCL'd through the grate, since I managed to get through the entire dungeon without being spotted once, but if you're on console or want a more pure experience, I'd recommend just skipping the quest.

Livia then became Thane of seven of the nine Holds, with only Eastmarch and Hjaalmarch not yet done. The latter is simple, if somewhat annoying...Morvath needs to die before we can get the Thane quest and that means figuring out if I can frenzy him and let his coven finish him off. As for the other...I have some ideas on how to finish Blood on the Ice, but it's going to involve either power levelling alteration or reverse pickpocketing and simultaneously paralysing/frenzying the murderer while he is around a bunch of city guards. No Stone Unturned was also done, to get the final stone we did, regrettably, have to join the Dark Brotherhood. Which is surprising since, you know, we're not a killer. Constance killed Grelod the Kind, and then Astrid killed all the victims in the shack. My preference would have been to report the DB to the Penitus Occulatus and grab the gem while doing Destroy the DB...only that requires killing Astrid so obviously our pacifist had to join an assassin's guild instead. Urgh.

And of course to finish off that quest we also had to do quite a bit of the main quest, including Diplomatic Immunity. Dragons have been a surprisingly easy problem for the most part, the city guard and passing mages/Thalmor/Dawnguard patrols have given us about 11 dragon souls to spend. You can also get an extra dragon soul once you're confirmed dragonborn by returning to and activating the Tomb of Jurgen Windcaller, in case you didn't know. I took that and immediately put it in Become Ethereal, for obvious reasons.

Oh, and we also killed a Dragon Priest. I wanted the Krosis mask, for more empowered alchemy cheese, so I went up to Shearpoint Peak, and when Krosis popped out I frenzied him and went invisible. This led to the dragon perched on the Word Wall attacking him and while it didn't kill Krosis, it brought him down to about 1/3rd health before Krosis' staff of fireballs finally killed it. I finished him off by casting Rout on him and making him run into a pack of ice wraiths who, after being frenzied, happily killed him off.

So, the next step after acquiring the remaining Thaneships and houses is to join the Dawnguard, because crossbows are lit, go adventure for a bit in Beyond Skyrim: Bruma (read: raid the Bruma castle treasury) and then maybe go to Solstheim so I can pick up the Frenzy and Poison runes, as enemies are now strong enough they sometimes need softening up before someone else kills them.

Oh, and we also killed a Dragon Priest. I wanted the Krosis mask, for more empowered alchemy cheese, so I went up to Shearpoint Peak, and when Krosis popped out I frenzied him and went invisible. This led to the dragon perched on the Word Wall attacking him and while it didn't kill Krosis, it brought him down to about 1/3rd health before Krosis' staff of fireballs finally killed it. I finished him off by casting Rout on him and making him run into a pack of ice wraiths who, after being frenzied, happily killed him off.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was going to work at all, but my hope was to drive him towards a giant or mammoth or something. I'm actually surprised ice wraiths could hurt him, you'd think a lich would be immune to frost damage.

My main takeaway has been that this whole playstyle would be much easier with a mod to disable combat boundaries. The worst enemies are those you face on their own, because unless there is a convenient trap (hello Bleak Falls Barrow) or height to knock them off, you are completely fucked. At least with disabled boundaries, you can kite enemies back into other enemies, and then use the old "frenzy-shadow warrior-whirlwind sprint-invisibility" trick to escape the chaos.

For instance, I should be able to kill Morokei and Raghot, maybe Nakhriin as well, but the other masked Dragon Priests are out of the question.

Uh oh. I've discovered two things which may completely "ruin" this playthrough for me.

First, the Apocalypse spell package has a spell called "Entomb". It allows you to capture an NPC in an underground prison, only to release them in a location of your choosing. I'm sure you can see where this is going (all the way up to the Throat of the World, where I will Fus Ro Dah them off. Or alternatively in the middle of the Thalmor Embassy). This completely negates the "solo enemy" problem I outlined before, even if it is a "modded" solution.

Secondly, it turns out summoning uncontrolled Ash Guardians doesn't count them as being "your" summons and so their kills don't go on your counter. And Ash Guardians are on a par with Storm Atronachs in terms of health and damage, so they're pretty tough. I don't know if they are susceptible to "Command Daedra" spells if they're already unbound, so they may be a very viable option for dealing with named Dragon Priests.

This may actually allow the game to be completed. All 3 main quests, the Dork Brotherhood, even the Companions.